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mostly an office thing
Home use lags behind and is unlikely to catch up
By Jeremy Schlosberg
Those who believe that high-speed internet access is soon going to transform general online habits and reinvent the entertainment industry have a surprise in store for them.
The American people remain rather apathetic about broadband. Most see it as a workplace phenomenon with little relevance to home life, according to a new study done jointly by Arbitron and Coleman.
Broadband users now comprise 31 percent of the overall internet universe, reports the Arbitron and Coleman study.
But this percentage is largely due to internet users with broadband in the office.
Of those internet users with high-speed access, 64 percent have this access at work, 37 percent have it at home, and 22 percent have it at college, according to the study.
Most strikingly, the study shows that having broadband at work is not inspiring many to bring it into their homes.
Of those who have broadband at work, fully 70 percent say they have no plans to get it at home over the next 12 to 18 months.
The overall home, work and college percentages don’t add up to 100 because there is some overlap, with some people having broadband access in more than one location.
But there is not as much of this overlap as the industry has been counting on. Most broadband revolution visionaries have presumed access at work would lead quickly to more access at home, but this isn’t happening.
"This is kind of amazing to me that there’s so little overlap between home and work access," says Bill Rose, general manager and vice president, Arbitron Webcast Services.
Two-thirds of those who have broadband access at work have a dial-up connection at home, according to the study. Another 13 percent have no internet access of any kind at home.
Only 21 percent of those with high-speed access at work also have it at home.
Broadband is clearly seen as something needed much more at work than at home.
And broadband penetration at home remains relatively low, despite reasonably high awareness.
The study says that 59 percent of all consumers in the country have heard of high-speed access.
Why don’t more people want broadband at home?
The study suggests it has something to do with the internet’s persistence as an information rather than an entertainment medium.
Broadband usage does not at this point seem to affect people’s view of the internet as being about information, not entertainment.
When broadband users were asked if they think of the internet as being more for entertainment or for information, 75 percent said information.
Only 14 percent of broadband users said they think of the internet as being for entertainment; 11 percent said it’s for both.
Rose says that this overall impression of the internet as being more for information is driven by the at-work segment of the broadband market, where the percentage is even higher—82 percent of broadband users at work view the internet as being for information while just 8 percent say it’s for entertainment.
Rose does not believe, however, that this information orientation is necessarily here to stay. He points to the fact that 22 percent of broadband users in the 18- to 24-year-old age group think of the internet as being for entertainment. To him, this means a shift is ultimately in the works.
"We believe the college marketplace is pointing to the future," Rose says. "They think of broadband as being more entertainment-based. I think broadband providers and people in the media are going to need to provide these people with more of an entertainment aspect to broadband offerings."
Companies banking on a more entertainment-filled future for broadband should remember, however, that college students are not infallible predictors of mainstream behavior, since many attitudes that are expressed in college are more about the life stage being experienced than about behaviors that remain in place as college-aged people grow older.
That is to say, 18- to 24-year-olds have more time for entertainment because they are 18 to 24 years old.
Even among broadband users currently in that age group, only 22 percent think of the internet as being about entertainment. This seems rather oddly low, and not at all a sign that entertainment will soon take over the internet.
One other thing the report makes clear is that broadband use at this stage is largely a non-ethnic endeavor.
Some 86 percent of all broadband users are white, 5 percent are African American, 3 percent are Hispanic American and 5 percent listed themselves as "other."
June 25, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jeremy Schlosberg is the senior editor for new media.
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