Many Dial-Up Users Don’t Want Broadband

A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests many of America's remaining dial-up users simply aren't interested in broadband.

A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that some U.S. Internet users might be sticking with dialup not because they don’t have broadband options available to them, but simply because they aren’t interested in faster Internet access.

According to the survey of 1,553 U.S. Internet users conducted in April and May of this year, about 55 percent of adult Americans now have some sort of broadband Internet connection at home, which up from 47 percent at the same time in 2007. These figures have been accompanied by a sharp decline in the number of users who only have dial-up Internet access at home: according to the survey, just 10 percent of Americans now rely on dial-up Internet connections at home.

Although the report notes that the limited (or non-existent) availability of broadband Internet access in rural and outlying areas is one limiting factor on broadband adoption—along with service pricing that excludes many poor Americans—some 62 percent of current dial-up users say they simply aren’t interested in switching from their current connection methods to broadband. Asked what it would take to get them to switch to broadband Internet, 35 percent of dial-up users said broadband would have to be less expensive and 14 percent said broadband would have to be available where they live (this number jumped to 24 percent amongst rural users. But 35 percent of dial-up users said nothing was going to convince them to get broadband service.

The study also found that about 27 percent of adult Americans are not Internet users at all; these non-users tend to be older Americans and have lower incomes than online users. Only 10 percent non-Internet users say they’re interested in getting online, with a third of those users saying they’re just not interested.