• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, September 26, 2005

The demand for broadband service has slowed in the last three years, as many experienced users have already switched to high-speed service, according to a recent report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"Relative to 2002, there is not much pent-up demand for high-speed Internet use at home," states the report, "Broadband Adoption in the United States: Growing but Slowing," which was presented to the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference on Saturday.

Fifty-three percent of Internet users now have high-speed Web access at home, compared to 50 percent last December, according to a Pew's May telephone survey of about 2000 consumers in the United States. That increase is far less steep than the jump from November of 2003 to May of 2004, when the number of people with high-speed home connections grew from 35 percent to 42 percent.

The report also concluded that "moderately experienced" dial-up users--defined as those with between one and six years of Web experience--were not "attractive candidates" for switching to broadband. As a group, dial-up users with between one and six years of Web experience were older than they were three years ago (with an average age of 43, compared to 39 in 2002); less well-off (36 percent had annual household incomes of less than $30,000, compared to 23 percent in 2002); and not as well-educated (24 percent were college graduates, compared to 28 percent in 2002).