The following is from the April 2005 St. Paul Wireless Technology Study.
"The expansion of online households, which has reached a plateau of 60 percent
of U.S. households, is inhibited by the fact that four out of five offline
households do not have a PC in the home. Nevertheless, one-third of offline
households are accessing the Internet from locations other than home β a
natural market segment for broadband adoption."
So, a significant difference exists between "connectivity" and "access." The
barrier being the affordability of a PC at home. I am assuming the data is from
the 2000 Census PUMS data, which was collected in 1999.
"87% of the residential living units in Saint Paul have access to Qwest's DSL
service and approximately one out of five subscribe to DSL. The regular
residential fee for this service starts at $40 for 1.5Mbps download."
So, while Qwest had relatively good coverage for DSL, only about 17% of St.
Paul households were subscribers to Qwest DSL service. Dial-up access is not
mentioned in the report. I assume this is 2004 or 2005 data from Qwest.
Charlie mentions income level as correlated to internet penetration. In
addition age and urban/rural are correlated. And, having a PC at home is an
obvious factor that limits penetration. Nevertheless, a fairly large number of
households (up to a third) without a PC seem to have access via libraries,
friends, school, work, or other access points.
If we discount group housing (nursing homes, military housing, jails, etc.)
Charlie's figure of 75% internet penetration seems a good figure of 2007. In
addition, of the remaining 25%, my guess is that at least a quarter of those
have internet access outside the home. So, an access figure should be closer to
80%.
Douglas Petty
MacGroveland