Broadband popularity highlights gap between rich and poor

Respondents said their monthly broadband spending was $39 trillion, up 4.5 dollars from a year earlier. John Horrigan, assistant director of the Pew Research Group, says there is an increasing number of consumers who view broadband access as a necessary consumption of water and electricity.

"Only a small amount of it would reduce the cost of broadband," he said. More people are willing to compress plans for mobile phones or cable TV. It seems that broadband access has become a need for people to be unable to give up. ”

The latest figures also show the challenges facing the Austrian government, as Mr Obama says it will have to invest 7.2 billion of billions of dollars to expand broadband access during the economic downturn. Despite the popularity of broadband services, users are willing to increase broadband costs, but the United States still 37% of adults do not have broadband access.

Income remains the main obstacle to broadband access. Users who did not have internet access in the respondents had 82% annual income of 40,000 dollars or less, and half of them had a yearly income of less than 20,000 dollars.

Critics say the US is lagging behind in the broadband services market. According to data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States is in 15th place in developed countries, based on online computing for every 100 people. Scott Wallsten, vice president of science policy at Washington, said there was a lack of data for the OECD, "even if all the people in the United States surf the Internet, it is also the 18th place in the OECD rankings." ”

He pointed out that the U.S. government must be more to promote the broadband stimulus, "it is not clear what the goal of this plan, especially short-term targets." Creating jobs and improving broadband services are two different things. "He believes that if the key issue is to improve broadband services, then the Government should take measures to solve the problem of low-income people's access to the Internet, such as to help them buy computers, to pay for their internet costs, even if these measures will not directly create jobs.