• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, August 11, 2010

Only two out of three U.S. adults, or 66%, use a broadband connection to surf the Web from home, up slightly from 63% last year, Pew's Internet & American Life Project reports today.

An additional 5% of Americans connect to the Web via dial-up lines. As for the remaining 29%, they either don't go online at all (21% completely eschew the Web) or connect only from work or another out-of-home locale.

And, in a bit of news that doesn't bode well for increased adoption, many of those who aren't online don't think they're missing much. According to Pew, 48% of non-users say online content isn't relevant to their lives, while 60% say they don't know enough about computers to get online.

Those results seem consistent with Pew's previous reports on the topic: Many people who lack broadband say they don't want it.

But the problem with that conclusion is that it's hard to know whether those people would change their minds if broadband was more accessible.

Consider, more than one in three, 35%, of Americans who responded to Pew's survey said they paid between $41 and $60 a month for a home Internet connection -- a hefty expense considering that many people still are reeling from the recession that started in the fall of 2008. An additional 20% of Pew respondents said they paid between $20 and $41 a month.

Also, many Americans -- between 14 million and 24 million, according to the Federal Communications Commission -- don't have the option of signing up for broadband at home because no local providers offer the service.

Perhaps if Internet service providers step up efforts to roll out affordable and fast connections, some people who currently see no reason to pay for the service will decide that broadband is indeed worth having.