Talk of a slowdown of broadband adoption in the U.S. for 2005, proved to be totally off target as high-speed access has grown to 60 percent of U.S. households, according to a report by Leichtman Reasearch Group, called "Broadband Access and Services in the Home 2006."
Growth looks like it will continue for a while as forty percent of dial-up subscribers say that they plan on upgrading to broadband. The former barriers of lack of rural access and cost has diminished to the point that it's not really playing a factor in the decision-making anymore.
Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for the Leichtman Research Group says "The number of broadband subscribers in America will nearly double [in the next five years], so there's a huge opportunity, with lower entry prices, particularly with DSL, the migration from dial-up is much quicker than many expected."
At this time cable holds the broadband subscriber lead with 25.8 million while DSL accounts for 20.2 million of the high-speed accounts.Cable subscribers are usually higher income households of $75,000 and DSL subscribers earn between $30,000 to $75,000.
Leichtman confirms that "Income is the greatest predictor of broadband penetration, and cable does very well among the high-income groups, where DSL has performed very well in the past year is in the middle class where they have taken a market share lead over cable."
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