Share of Cost, Modernizing America’s communications lifeline
Late last month, the Pew Research Center released a major report on broadband adoption. The results were mixed. On the plus side, 70 percent of U.S. adults have now adopted wire-line broadband in the home, which marks a statistically significant rise over the past year. When you factor in smartphone adoption, 80 percent of U.S. households are now connected to the Internet and more than 90 percent of adults under the age of 49 are online at home. That’s all good news. The problem is that means one in five Americans is not connected at home and low-income Americans remain disproportionately on the wrong side of this digital divide. Among families earning less than $30,000/year, one in three is completely offline, and barely half are connected if you remove smartphones from the equation.