• by April 19, 2004

The number of adults who access the Internet via broadband connections at home and at work has grown to 68 million as of March 1, according to a study conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The study also found that 48 million adults have broadband connections at home.

The survey pointed to several interesting broadband adoption trends, including the fact that household broadband penetration accounted for 39 percent of American Internet users at the end of February--up from 31 percent since Pew's earlier poll in November 2003. Pew found that 48 million U.S. adults had high-speed connections at home as of February--a 60 percent jump since March 2003, when that number stood at 30 million.

Among other findings:

*55 percent of all adult Internet users, or 34 percent of all adult Americans, have access to high-speed Internet connections either at home or at work.

*39 percent of adult Internet users, or 24 percent of all adult Americans, have high-speed access at home--a 60 percent increase since March 2003.

*Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service represents 42 percent of the home broadband market--up from 28 percent in March 2003. Broadband access via cable modems accounted for 54 percent of home broadband users.

*52 percent of college-educated people age 35 and younger have broadband connections at home.

*Only 10 percent of rural Americans go online from home with high-speed connections, or about one-third the rate for non-rural Americans.

*More than half (54 percent) of at-work broadband users have college degrees, and 37 percent live in households with incomes of greater than $75K per year.

"If you're well-off and educated, you're more likely to have broadband [access] than dial-up," said John Horrigan, senior research specialist, Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Horrigan noted that African-Americans and other minority groups are much less likely to have broadband in the home than other Americans--a finding that he attributes in part to income level. "Some of these groups are [also] likely to have gotten online fairly recently, in the last two to three years, and as such, they haven't begun to really build the Internet into their everyday lives," he said.

"As people start to do more things online, whether it's online transactions or online auctions, they do get more impatient with their dial-up connections," Horrigan added.

The survey indicated that broadband pricing remains prohibitive for many Americans. Dial-up users, according to the study, are willing to pay an average of $6-$7 more per month for broadband access.

The Pew study, which was conducted between February 3 and March 1, polled 2,204 Americans age 18 and over; 63 percent of the survey respondents were Internet users.