A article from EcommerceTimes.com says that the growth of broadband has slowed to a crawl. The growth reported by Pew from December, 2005 to May, 2005 was just 3%.
Pew's May 2005 survey indicated that 53 percent of Americans get online with high-speed connections, up 3 percent since December 2004, but described by Pew as a "statistically insignificant increase" that is likely to remain flat or even drop further in the near future.
Analysts attribute the slowdown to a saturation of users, and a reluctance of today's dial-up Internet users to pay more for bandwidth that they don't necessarily need.
"The issue is that the remaining pool of dial-up users today is a different demographic category," author of the report and Pew research director John Horrigan told the E-Commerce Times. "A couple years back, you had people making the bit-per-buck calculation, where the dial-up wait was costly in time, and prompted them to switch. The existing pool of dial-up users is not accessing as many bits."
It is surprising that growth has slowed with only 53% of Americans using broadband. Obviously, the demographics have something to do with it. There are probably difficulties in showing the huge advantage of broadband and opportunities that are available online to people that are not interested in internet access whether it is broadband or dial-up. This demographic may not come into broadband until it is a free with your digital cable or satellite tv or some other type of offer.
