A new study released by the Center for Rural Policy & Development estimates that home broadband adoption accelerated significantly across the state in 2006, even while home computer ownership and Internet connectivity inched up only slightly.
The report estimates that at the end of 2006 68.7 percent of all Minnesota households owned at least one working computer (compared to 68 percent in 2005) and 63.5 percent of households maintained a home Internet connection (59.6 percent in 2005), but broadband adoption increased to 49 percent of all households, compared to 37 percent in 2005.
The 2006 Minnesota Internet Study is an annual statewide survey of Minnesota households conducted since 2001 by the Center to monitor the adoption, deployment and use of digital technologies throughout Minnesota. Originally designed as a study to track the adoption of these technologies only in rural Minnesota, in 2005 it was expanded to include both rural Minnesota and the Twin Cities metro area.
The 2006 study randomly surveyed 747 households in the seven-county metro and 748 rural Minnesota households. The study has a tolerated margin of error at the 95-percent confidence interval of ±3.52 percent. Besides the figures cited above, the study found:
- Broadband Internet technology has clearly entered the mainstream. With close to half of all Minnesota families connecting to the Internet with a broadband connection, it is no longer a technology just for innovators and early adopters.
- The gap between rural and metro households in computer ownership, Internet connectivity and broadband adoption has not narrowed. Essentially, growth occurred in both rural and metro Minnesota throughout 2006 at relatively equivalent rates.
- The study clearly suggests that while some of the rural-metro difference in technology adoption is still a function of the availability of broadband, most of the gap can be explained by the demographic and socio-economic differences found between rural and metro populations. Income and age are significant factors in technology adoption, and metro populations, which have higher technology adoption rates than rural areas, tend have a smaller percentage of elderly and lower-income residents.
- While broadband growth has accelerated recently, it will inevitably slow in the near future as growth in the number of households that own computers is not keeping pace. Once every home with a computer has a broadband connection, we will still have 25-30 percent of Minnesota households off line. This is true in both rural and metro Minnesota.
- Because a majority of the newer Internet applications such as MySpace, YouTube and iTunes require a broadband connection to work well, a new digital divide is emerging between dial-up and broadband users, as dial-up connections cannot efficiently download the very large files required to access many of these new Internet sites.
Dr. Jack Geller, president of the Center for Rural Policy and Development observed, seeing the rise in broadband adoption clearly suggests that broadband is now a mainstream technology and no longer just for techies, innovators and early adopters. Today, a majority of Minnesota households embrace these technologies and integrate them into their daily lives.
However, unless we can figure out how to increase the penetration of home computers, this growth will soon slow down and a significant percentage of Minnesotans will be left behind.
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A copy of the full report can be downloaded from the Center's Web site at www.ruralmn.org .
The Center for Rural Policy & Development is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan rural policy research center, dedicated to the study of the economic, social and cultural forces that impact rural Minnesotans and the communities they reside in.
