PEW research released their latest broadband uptake in US numbers in report today. Big discrepancy between access and uptake. Not surprising considering the lack of competition and high prices enforced by huge monopoly telecoms.
One anecdotal report…
For example, at my house in LC as typical, the only true high-speed internet is available from Comcast. I forget who bought Comcast…oh, right, it was Comcast that bought NBC/Universal… but there’s no real competition. In fact, to get high-speed internet I pretty much have to do a bundle with cable tv…and I include my land line phone as well. But that all costs close to $200 month. If I try to unbundle, I don’t really save.
Then to support just data on my iPad that’s about 20 or 30 month for gated and capped bandwidth paid to Verizon for 2 or 3GB monthly.
Whereas what I’d really like to do is “cut the cable” and just go with streaming for my media consumption needs… So, I would show up in such a survey has having broadband access, and with uptake too, but very motivated to find an alternative to the monopoly that exists.
And of course, overall, this is nothing like the situation of those in rural areas where there’s no high-speed internet, and/or the poor who couldn’t afford it even at half the price.
Maybe Google and other competitors for broadband infrastructure, and also the FCC, can change this situation in the next few years. One can hope…but one can be pessimistic too.