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2/3 of Americans Without Broadband Don't Want It
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Jan 23, 2009 12:34 PM
from the if-we-build-it-will-they-come dept.
from the if-we-build-it-will-they-come dept.
Ant writes in with news that won't be welcomed by the incoming US administration as it tries to expand the availability of broadband Internet service. A recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates, as noted by Ars Technica, that two-thirds of Americans without broadband don't want it. "...when we look at the overall reasons why Americans don't have broadband, availability isn't the biggest barrier. Neither is price. Those two, combined, only account for one-third of Americans without broadband. Two-thirds simply don't want it. The bigger issue is a lack of perceived value."
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Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they want it. They just don't want to pay scary fees for it.
It's Old Century Ignorance talking. By 2013 this topic won't exist.
Re:Don't want to pay (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
especially the elderly, have no need or desire for the internet.
I suspect that when I am in my eighties, I will have
much less desire to communicate with the world or check the news on a minute by minute basis.
Just because some of us use the internet on a regular basis, that
doesn't mean that everyone would be better off for it.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:4, Insightful)
I consider myself moderately young (or young minded) and I steer clear of facebook or other social networking crap. My friends my age have it, but, I'm too concerned about privacy issues, etc to mess with that. I'm still of the mindset I got from the earlier days of the internet...try to stay anonymous as you can within reason. At the very least, don't go posting pics of yourself half nekkid with friends, sucking a skull bong.
It could come back to haunt you later for a job interview...especially if it is security related.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Informative)
Do your friends post your pictures on Facebook? Last I checked, the only way to prevent people from explicitly searching for you in pictures was to have an account and disable it.
Also, with an account, you can untag your pictures.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Funny)
At the very least, don't go posting pics of yourself half nekkid with friends, sucking a skull bong.
I'm a bit dyslexic, but when I read that, at first I thought you wrote, "sucking a bull dong." I thought, wow, no wonder cayenne8 wants some privacy. I wouldn't that showing up during a job interview, either.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
It could come back to haunt you later for a job interview...especially if it is security related.
I think it's going to go the other way once people begin to realize that most people are human and have a life outside of the office. In other words, people will loosen up a bit and realize that having pictures of yourself doing the stuff that everybody else is doing anyway isn't a bad thing, the increased transparency will force standards to relax. Sort of like how Clinton didn't inhale, Bush snorted coke, and Obama smoked pot, yet they were all able to be elected. 50 years ago that likely wouldn't have been the case.
Perhaps we'll finally lighten up a bit about nudity now that porn, and all sorts of weird stuff at that, is so readily available online and viewed in such massive numbers.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:4, Informative)
Um, mark your profile as private so that only your friends can see it ; )
You can even set up groups of friends and limit the content they see based on the group they are in.
If you have incriminating stuff just mark it for the group of superclose friends and the rest will never see it.
-Viz
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:4, Insightful)
I find the example of your grandmother and the microwave oven a little funny. Only because I grew up using microwaves and over the last year or two, as I've learned to cook, I've gradually stopped using it. I don't think I've used our microwave at all in the past year.
I admit there's convenience and I don't blame or condemn people for using them. But everything you can do with a microwave you can do better (albeit slower) with traditional methods. The results are soooo much tastier if you put your hot sandwich in the oven, melt your butter in a small sauce pan or defrost your meat slowly in the fridge etc.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah your dad only downloads! ( 56k connection is much more symmetric)
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:4, Insightful)
I always find this argument interesting. How many anecdotes does it take to become a truth or near truth. I could talk about stories I've hear about people getting hit by cars because they didn't look both ways before crossing the street. Enough anecdotes like that and a truth emerges that if you don't pay attention in traffic, you can be killed, especially if you are a pedestrian. So how many is enough? Or do we now need some sort of scientist to gather them up and publish the anecdotes and his or her conclusion before the general public should pay heed to it. Common sense is indeed, not so common. Please, no more dogmatic arguments. Hitler. There I said it. Now you can invoke Godwin's stupid law too.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>The older generation doesn't know they want it.
You (and some others) sound like the TV preacher I recently heard. "Many people don't know they need GAWD in their lives. They don't know it, but they DO need him, because he will make their lives better!" (crowd cheers). "We must give them gawd as soon as possible even if they claim they don't want it. It's for their own good!"
Replace "gawd" with "broadband" and you have a politician and/or slashdotter.
(ducks spitball)
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:4, Informative)
Broadband has obvious, quantifiable benefits that are apparent basically as soon as you have it.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, explain the benefits of broadband for a person who does nothing but email with her computer.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:4, Interesting)
If I had mod points, I'd mod you -1, Insulting.
Older people are generally smarter about what they need and don't need, and able to decide for themselves. They've lived a lot longer than youngsters, seen a lot more, and figured out what's important and what isn't. They don't need flash animations or bittorrent feeds of last night's TV program to entertain themselves, and can actually read the newspaper when it is printed on paper.
I can fully believe that 2/3 of the people who don't have broadband don't want it. I can also believe that Obama thinks he knows better about what they want than they do, and will act on that belief using taxpayer dollars.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>Some of us need broadband? Have you tried to apply for a job without the internet lately?
You can't apply for a job using 50k dialup? Huh. I guess I'm just using magic then. (Waves hands over the resume - "transmit!")
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, Computer skills, in general, are becoming what literacy was a century ago. Sure, it is a skill that some don't have, and those that don't often are not constrained by money, or availability of the requisite materials.
And in some cases, such the case of the elderly, or a factory worker living in a trailer park, somewhere, the skill may not be needed. But those who choose to do without are limiting themselves and their potential.
As for their children and neighbors, well, they are part of that other 1/3, and the fact that they are outnumbered does not make computer literacy any less useful for them.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:4, Funny)
Well said! We should provide a translation for the kids, though, due to the drop in literacy - I'll do my best:
IMO, l337 5ki11z = literaSy yestrdae, d00d. We haz 5ki11z lam3rs haz no 5ki11z. Lam3rs haz no 'puter, no $, and no stuff.
Oldies and trash haz no 5ki11z and iz lam3rs. Lam3rs never 1337.
Kiddies n wifi l33ches R other 1/3 n b33ten by R l33tness.
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Re:Don't want to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they want it. They just don't want to pay scary fees for it.
Yeah. The key problem with US broad band is the people providing the broadband and not the customers.
I would almost suspect this kind of report would be used by the providers as an excuse not to roll out to rural areas.
Of course, these same companies will quash any rural municipality attempt to create their own network.
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No its not. (Score:5, Insightful)
People use the "they are deprived of it" "they deserve it" "its a right" more often than not because they want something themselves.
It is far easier to decry we don't have enough availability when you reference others - you can assuage your guilt that way.
Look, relatives of mine live on a farm. They care about the weather and look up current prices on feed and end products they sell. They have no need of anything but dial up and its done at the dark of the night because that is when they are done outside. To them its a tool. The problem with too many people is they can't tell a tool from entertainment anymore... they cannot tell work from addiction
Honestly I could live just fine without the net and cell phones, I grew up in the age when they weren't being rammed down our throats by everyone who wants to make a buck and that is what this availability is really about - businesses need to get into our wallets and someone decided that this will be the new means of doing so, trouble is we aren't playing along hence we must be ignorant.
yeah, whatever. I have high speed internet, my relatives do not, we are both happy and I would not change them and they would not change me. No ignorance, just acceptance that other people enjoy their lives just the way they are and aren't missing out on anything
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Re: Willing to pay ... small amounts (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose it were only some $12 a month like Dialup is now. They'd like it. For example there's a huge knitting club that meets in our local bookstore. I have heard them talk about downloading knitting patterns. It would take them 12 seconds instead of 38 minutes each.
It's a P-word thing. (Paradigm).
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Re: Willing to pay ... small amounts (Score:5, Funny)
First off I looked at the patterns, and they can be download over dialup in just 1-2 minutes. Hardly a long time.
Second: Can someone knit this for my wife? Va-va-voom!
http://knitty.com/ISSUEsummer04/images/allusionDET2.jpg [knitty.com]
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Don't want the bundle (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not opposed to paying but the problem I have is the bundle.
I get comcast interent but I don't get comcast cable tv. So they CHARGE Me $19 extra. I Could almost get cable tv for close to "free" (just $10 more for both).
Likewise for my mom whose on a fixed income but needs the comforts of phone, TV and the uncomplicated reliability of non-dailup internet, I can't find a scheme that lets me use skype.
for example, if I want to use sky I still need to have a DSL connection which means paying for basic phone service from Qwest (even though with skype we don't need that).
I want her to have a basic pay-as-you go cell phone for safety in her car, but there's no point in paying for that when, give that I'm paying Qwest for a land line, I might was well get their bundled Wireless.
And so it goes.
How come I can't just get ala carte DSL. How come I can't just get cable internet.
that is without the extra fees for not buying the bundle.
anyone know how to just buy DSL without a phone?
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Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
and even if you gave them broadband for free they still wouldn't be interested.
Until they find the porn.
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THEY dont want it. and also, they dont want it YET (Score:3, Informative)
first, it is sure that their children will want it. leave that aside, in every country governments and corporations are moving most of the services online. even news, media too. there will come a time when broadband internet connectivity will be a necessity for many things. better to make preparations for the day to come than sit back and relax.
My father... (Score:5, Interesting)
...was in the "Two-thirds simply don't want it. The bigger issue is a lack of perceived value" camp until he started receiving many rather large pictures and short home movies (usually taken from a digital camera) of his grand kids. He was also attempting to upload pictures he'd taken to the family Gallery (it runs Gallery [menalto.com]), but it took so long to do (he has a 7+ MP camera, so the pictures were rather large). After finally biting the bullet and getting *the cheapest* "broadband" he could find (I think it was 128k down / 64k up), within a couple weeks he had upgraded to a mid-level broadband package (somewhere around 1.5mb down/256(or more) up) and was finding himself doing so much more with it. I personally believe the final straw that made him actually upgrade his package was the ability to see/talk to his middle son (one of my two younger brothers) while he was/is deployed in Iraq (on his third tour now, I believe).
There are some people that just aren't going to want it, no matter what you show them can be done with it, but I think a large percentage of those 2/3 that "don't perceive the value" simply haven't had anyone explain/show them what value they could be getting.
1975 just called (Score:5, Funny)
And they don't really want any personal computers, they just don't see what good they are.
Right after that, 2030 sent an e-mail, which read "rofl no broadband? can u still even watch tv without it in ur time?"
demographic versus coverage (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad article (Score:5, Insightful)
You're always going to have people who don't adopt a new technology. These people shouldn't be used to not improve the technology for the rest of us.
However, 1/3 do want it (Score:5, Interesting)
and what percentage of the other 2/3 simply don't know what they are missing? It's like asking the population of 1930s America if they wanted highways - many probably wouldn't have seen the need for it. Many didn't have one in their area (PA turnpike and a few others around). Eisenhower, as a young officer, took part of a cross country convoy, to assess national roads, around the early 1920s IIRC, and it took them nearly 50 days to get coast to coast, that with seeing the German Autobahn in action up close is what lead him to spearhead the interstate system as President.
Infrastructure is almost always good and pays off, like the Hoover Dam + others Depression era projects are still serving us well today. But it's really tough for people with little experience with it to imagine the uses for it. They've been confined to stuff like dial-up for so long, that the concept of the internet as a medium for only text emails, sprinkled with a few static pictures and the like is hard to break for good reason.
Well, infrastructure does screw some people. (Score:5, Interesting)
While a lot of people did well with national infrastructure projects of the past, lets remember that some people did get screwed. There is always someone screwed when the government builds something, and that's why some people hate the government. This grievances are not illegitimate and you need to take the effects of them into account.
For example, let's look at how highways and hoover dam screwed some people.
First off, highways screwed cities. If you can drive anywhere, you don't need the concentration of goods that a city offers, and more so, you allow people to get to work without having to live near it. Essentially this has turned American cities into corporate islands surrounded by ghettos because nobody wants to live in cities but everyone will take the high paying jobs.
Secondly, highways screwed local stores. No national brand could exist without highways to truck goods all over the place. Everyone that bitches about the likes of Walmart, McDonalds and every other chain and laments the death of the local foods in the local store need only look at the highway to see why this took place.
Third, the highways really screwed blacks in America, because usually, in cities, all the overpasses and bridges and what not were all built in black neighborhoods, pretty much destroying the asset base of an already fragile population. New York City is a perfect example of this, and there are many black leaders that curse the name of Moses to this day - and no, not the biblical Moses.
Hoover dam screwed everyone that had local water, or needed the flow from the river downstream of the dam. You go to all this expense to get a good spot downstream and the government shuts you off. Or you go to all this expense to get your own water supply, and the government goes and doles it out to everyone else on the cheap, making your investment worthless.
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Re:However, 1/3 do want it (Score:4, Insightful)
They're sort of "trying to speak your language". When I'm talking to someone who thinks that only communists see value in infrastructure, I use the interstate highway system as an example, and they usually end up begrudgingly agreeing that infrastructure isn't all bad. And it works partially because it's sometimes the same people who LOVE cars because they believe that the alternatives (e.g. trains) are communist too.
And yes, I'd prefer to talk about something like trains, and the benefit it would have for our country to have a decent railway system, but that's kind of a step too far for some people. Besides, I can't exactly point to our existing train system as a rousing success, since it's been so poorly maintained.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, no, I'm not a communist or socialist. I'm just interested in having our be economically prosperous and generally efficiently run. I don't like the idea of the federal government doing very much, but building/maintaining/regulating large-scale infrastructure is one of a couple things the federal government should actually be doing.
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That is a sad statistic (Score:4, Insightful)
and lower prices, so if the majority of the people living in the US without
broadband don't want cheaper/better performing internet then something must
be really really wrong.
I would be guessing the lack of competition, throttling, being treated like dirt
and then spending a (comparatively) huge amount of money for the privilege
has probably scared those people off.
My father didn't want it. (Score:5, Informative)
My father is in his 60s, and lives on a farm in rural PA. When I was growing up he had zero interest in computers. He didn't even want one until he found out, maybe 5 years ago now, that he could contact his old army buddies on it. At the time, broadband wasn't available in his area, but I set him up with a computer with a modem, and he messed with it and tinkered with it, and, indeed, completely screwed it up a few time, but he did learn how to use it moderately well.
Maybe 2 years ago they finally get DSL in his area. He didn't want it. Zero interest. He already had his modem and could contact his army buddies, and that was fine. But whenever he needed to download Windows patches it took literally overnight. He had sort of set into using the internet in certain ways, and he was satisfied.
That was until he stayed with me in the city, where I have Comcast, and he got to use the internet in completely new ways. THEN he wanted, and now uses, DSL. He looks at Youtube. He uses Utorrent. He is glad he made the switch.
tldr; People don't want to switch because they don't actually know what they are missing.
My Parents are Frugal (Score:4, Insightful)
They both grew up with post-war shortages, and as a result they're naturally frugal. My dad uses the internet for email, forums and light web surfing, all on dial-up. Why? Because it's cheaper.
Here in Vancouver, dial up is about $10 per month, broadband is about $30 per month. To my dad's thinking, that's an extra $240 per year that he'd rather have in his pocket. If he needs broadband for something like Google earth he just strolls down to the library and surfs for free. He's retired, after all.
Perceived value is a proxy for price (Score:4, Interesting)
I have broadband (of sorts). My city provides free WiFi. Its good enough for my uses (downloading/uploading large documents and VoIP for long distance). I have a POTS line with the lowest price possible. No long distance (that's what VoIP and/or my cell phone are for). The phone line is for emergencies and as a back-up to the WiFi. I have rabbit ears for my TV sets The digital reception is great and the quality much better than what cable or satellite offers. Besides, I don't need more than a dozen channels.
Both my cable company (Comcast) and my phone company (Verizon FiOS) offer '3 in one' packages of TV/phone/broadband. But the added value just doesn't compute. The additional broadband speeds would be nice, but I don't need TV with 500 channels and phone with big feature packages. So, I figure the broadband would be economical at a price point of about $25/month. But that's not available from either provider. Worse yet, you can't get FiOS broadband only and keep your basic phone service. Verizon insists on moving its FiOS customers to the unregulated system.
So, I'm one of those 'statistics'. Its a lack of value, but if there was a suitable price, I'd buy it.
I dunno... (Score:5, Insightful)
It took us forever to get mother-in-law on broadband. Her computer is a cast-off donated by one of her sons which I've upgraded a couple of times. Thing is, she only uses it for email. Why would you need broadband for that? She finally converted when the local cable company offered her a package that essentially included it for free compared to the combined cost of phone/tv/dialup.
Parenthetically, I think this is the only way you're going to convert casual users -- by bundling broadband in with services considered more important.
Having broadband at her house helps me when our family visits, because I can work from there if necessary (I'm on call essentially 24/7) instead of driving down to the local coffee shop to use their wifi. But for her, the value is that her Outlook Express mailbox fills up in 2 seconds instead of 12. Given her computer takes 4 1/2 minutes to boot, the speed of fetching her email is down in the noise.
I think most of the unwashed public just can't see any value. (other than looking at pr0n...) This seems odd to us geeks, but it's demonstrably true -- demonstrable if you know any non-geeks. Unless you're streaming video, the higher bandwidth is barely perceptible. Who cares if a page loads in 1/8 of a second instead of 1/2 of a second? Well, I do, (and there seems to be unnecessary latency on my 20/5 FIOS line) but I observe (without completely understanding) that normal people do not.
If you want broadband saturation, you need a Killer App. Until very recently, there wasn't any legitimate non-geek use for it. Now you can catch up on TV episodes and watch old programs as streaming video. This is a good start, but it isn't as cool to the rank and file as you might think. Fred and Ethyl are used to watching TV on their TV, and having to crouch over a 17 inch monitor and poke webpage buttons with a mouse is not part of their paradigm. (There are solutions for all of this, but they're not well integrated -- forget it unless you know a geek.)
The Netflix box, Apple TV, are a good start -- they're actually *more* convenient than driving to Blockbuster, rather than *less* convenient. (I tried to explain torrents to my mom once. Yeah, right...) But the hard fact is, Fred and Ethyl are still more likely to watch whatever is on cable at the time their butts happen to be on the couch. It's just the way it is.
In this response, I've completely ignored the huge amount of non-entertainment information available on the internet, because I think the great majority largely ignores it also. If an online news service has a million unique hits, that's not much in a country of 300+M people. I suspect that the great majority still wants someone attractive-looking to tell them what's important in 43 minutes minus commercials. This concerns me, because it tends to further stratify the country, but making someone buy a product they don't want and don't think they need is always going to be problematic.
I can relate (Score:4, Interesting)
I only got a cell phone 3 years ago and use it less than 30 min a month, it doesn't have a camera, and the only text messages I've sent is "Wrong number" replies. I'm not signed up with myspace/facebook/twitter/whateverelseisthefadthisyear, and abandoned my blog after a few months since I had nothing interesting to say. I don't have satellite/digital cable or and do not own a single HDTV set. I still use a VCR - no TIVO/DVR. I'm satisfied with a $15/month 768kb DSL connection since anything faster would cost at least twice as much in my area. I'm a software engineer, yet by today's standards I would be considered a Luddite.
Re:I can relate (Score:4, Insightful)
You abandoned your blog because you had nothing interesting to say? ... I wish more people would do that.
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In New York City in 1882... (Score:5, Interesting)
"It (the first central commercial incandescent electric generating station) provided electricity to one square mile in New York City in 1882. The first day it operated only 52 customers wanted electricity."
ref: http://library.thinkquest.org/6064/history.html [thinkquest.org]
convincing vast majority about useful utility for higher quality of life is not alway about supply and demand or availability of technology.
My mom rejects it (Score:4, Funny)
I've tried 1,000 times to get a computer and Internet access for my mom, but she flatly rejects it. She actively doesn't want a computer. It's not because she doesn't know how to use them, but that she put in her years running a mainframe and is utterly burnt out on the subject.
Me: So at work, we have one computer with lots of hard drives and set the other computers to store their users' information on it instead of their own hard drives.
Mom: So your home directories are on NFS?
Me: Are you sure you don't want a computer, maybe a nice Mac?
Mom: No, and quit asking!
...or...
Me: I got a DSL connection.
Mom: Is that fast?
Me: In network terms, it's around 8 megabits.
Mom: So, about 5 T1s?
Me: Not even a little laptop?
Mom: No, and quit asking!
She's not skipping the "Internet revolution" because it's above her head. She's skipping it because she was there when they were building it, she did her time, and now wants to do other stuff.
Ditto for rail and many other things (Score:4, Insightful)
The don't want it because they don't know what it can do. It's the same reason we don't have a good national (or even regional) electric train system. Few people have ever seen one, know that they exist, or have any idea of the benefits.
Re:Ditto for rail and many other things (Score:4, Insightful)
I was just about to post this.
I was going to say that 2/3 of people who didn't have a telephone didn't want one and then 2/3 of people who didn't have a cell phone didn't want one.
It's ignorance. They don't know what it's capable of or even how to use it. It's not that they don't want it, it's that they don't yet know how much they want it.
I wish we had a train system here in miami. A bullet train to orlando would be sweet.
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Re:They got their War, they can have our Broadband (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:The country needs broadband. (Score:5, Informative)
Guess what, 'greatest generation', now we want to spend tax money on something that is GOOD for the nation.
Like rampant botnets? These are people who have said, out loud and with conviction, that they wouldn't use broadband if they had it. If you make it some kind of mandatory, they'll use it... but they won't take care of it. To use a /.-mandatory car analogy, make automobiles mandatory to go the the doctor's office, and you'll find unmaintained cars breaking down in the middle of the road all over, because the car hasn't been made that doesn't need tire replacement, oil-and-filter changes, and other periodic maintenance. If the driver can't be convinced they're responsible for that, the rest of us are boned.
Give every non-enthusiasts any network-connected computing device and you've just multiplied the attack space for worms and trojans by perhaps an order of magnitude. Are you volunteering to be tech support for those folks?
And, so help me $DIETY, if you Mactards and Linux zealots* start smugging on about how the whole maintenance and vulnerability issue vanishes if you just give Ma and Pa Kettle Macs or Ubuntu boxen, I swear I'll reach through the internet and smack you. Again, I'll say it: the car hasn't been built yet (and never will) that doesn't need periodic maintenace, and the same is even more true of computing boxes. Period. Given a large enough target zone, blackhats will find and exploit vulnerabilities. And Grandpa and Grandma won't know or care. "Educate 'em!", you say? Feh. To quote Calvin: "You can present the material, but you can't make me care".
I didn't want the war foisted upon us by lying politicians and the gullible and cowardly older generation, but here it is.
Non-sequitur. Strawman. Absolutely irrelevant. You don't want the war foisted on you, but at least no one is putting a gun in your hand and making you responsible for fighting it. "Mandatory" broadband in the hands of the untrained, unwilling, and uninterested is the functional equivalent.
But hey, don't let me stand in the way of your emo-angst irrationality. I'm sure the purported GWOT and the necessity of universal broadband are intimately connected somehow in your mind.
*Full disclosure: I am, after a fashion, a Linux zealot. I'm also a realist. Linux is not the answer to all life's problems. Linux is not Superman. Linux is not invulnerable. Linux is just far less evil than most of the alternatives. And speaking of evil, I am not a Mac enthusiast, because Apple's corporate and IP policies disgust me.
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