Almost all U.S. families live in areas where a high-speed Internet connection is available, but many see no compelling reason to pay extra for it, the government reports.
A Commerce Department study, compiled from a variety of analyst surveys, cites a need for more music, movies and games on the Internet in order to make broadband connections more popular. Only 10 percent of U.S. households subscribe to high-speed access, lower than the rate in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong or Canada. About half of American families have some type of Internet access at home.
The report credits the defunct file-trading service Napster for promoting the purchase of high-speed access as well as PCs, CD-ROM writers and large hard drives. But since Napster fell under legal action from the music industry, nothing similar has taken its place. New file-trading networks tend to be hard to use and still are threatened by lawsuits, while the music industry's legal online delivery services have been criticized as too expensive and restrictive. There remains no legal way to find most popular movies online.
The high relative cost of fast access is also a hurdle. Most people pay about $50 per month for high-speed connections, whereas slower dial-up connections are only $20 a month. In an August 2002 Yankee Group survey, more than 70 percent of dial-up users cited cost as the main reason they aren't upgrading to faster access.
News source: Yahoo
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