The American Taxpayer--Who Needs Faster Broadband?

How fast is “faster” broadband and who wants it at any speed? The FCC has proposed spending tens of billions of dollars on broadening the high-speed internet infrastructure in the US. Even the agency does not have a final number. It will depend on how many people the project will reach and how fast their broadband connections will be.

A new study from The Pew Internet and American Family Life Project shows that high-speed broadband is not important to most citizens at all–particularly if they have to pay for it with higher taxes of an expanded deficit. “By a 53%-41% margin, Americans say they do not believe that the spread of affordable broadband should be a major government priority,” the study says. It is counter-intuitive, but “non-internet users are less likely than current users to say the government should place a high priority on the spread of high-speed connections.”Sixty-five percent of Americans have broadband access now compared to 63% a year ago. That is not much of an increase if people are hungry for better service. African American adoption rose much more quickly over the same period–22%.

The mystery about the lack of desire for faster connection speeds may not be a mystery at all. The FCC and other broadband-for-all advocates assume that ever American wants or needs a better connection or any connection at all. Some US citizens view the internet as an intrusion into their privacy–a place rife with fraud and people who want to steal their credit or identities. This concern is not unwarranted.

Another reason that some people do not want broadband is that dial-up serves their needs. There are still ISPs including AOL (NYSE: AOL) and United Online (NASDAQ: UNTD) that provide dial-up services to hundreds of thousands of people. Some of these people are infrequent users of the internet. Others only access sites that world fine on 56k connections.

The last and perhaps most important reason the many people do not care about fast home internet connections is that their primary access to the worldwide web is through 3G handheld devices like smartphones, tablets, and light laptops. There online connection speeds are fast and with the advent of 4G, they will become faster. People who use these devices already have what they need It is just not brought to the home by a wire.

Douglas A. McIntyre