• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 6, 2005

The majority of people who use the Internet at home (53 percent) now have high-speed connections, up from 21 percent in 2002, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The report, based on two surveys this year of around 4,000 people total, found that home broadband users are more likely to read news online, buy products on the Web, bank online, download computer programs or music, participate in online auctions, play online games and read or create blogs.

"Broadband access is now a more significant predictor of online behavior than years of online experience," states the report.

Who has broadband? Education, income and age all play a role, according to the report. Sixty-two percent of home Internet users with a college or graduate degree have a high-speed connection, compared to less than half -- 44 percent -- of those with a high school education.

Seventy-one percent of home Internet users with a household income greater than $75,000 have broadband connections, compared to 42 percent of home Web users with annual household incomes of less than $30,000. Keep in mind, those numbers don't tell the whole story. Almost all -- 93 percent -- of those with household incomes greater than $75,000 have some sort of Web access at home, so the total proportion of users in that demographic with broadband connections is still quite high: 66 percent. But just 49 percent of those with household incomes less than $30,000 have any Web access, so the total proportion of people in that bracket with high-speed access is just 21 percent.

More than half of those between 18 and 64 with home Internet access have high-speed connections, compared to one-third of those 65 and older.

While the latest findings jibe with other recent studies -- and basic intuition about broadband use -- Pew also reported some more sobering statistics. More than one in five U.S. adults, or 22 percent, have never gone online, not even for e-mail; that percentage is roughly flat from 2002, when 23 percent of the population had never gone online.