Let's have a little reality check.
Nielsen published broadband penetration data (thanks to SmartMobs, btw).
So, as usual in these things, you can't really quite manage to reconcile the terms they use since they're never clearly defined.
The original press release of the report says, "95.5 million users from home of active broadband," 68% of people who have internet have broadband, and "internet penetration in the US" is 74%. Now, first note that it's very ambiguous whether they mean households, users, or home+office; but let's assume they mean users at home, since the data that they specify indicates this. Let's also assume that they say the word "active" meaningfully, which is to say that there's also a non-active segment.
So, given this, that means there are 220.5 million internet users, of which 150 million are broadband internet users. Of those 150 million, 95.5 million are "active" broadband internet users. Keep in mind there are 298 million people in the US.
Now what does that mean?
That means that 54.4 million users have internet but not broadband and 29.5 have broadband but are not active! And that's in addition to the 77.5 million who don't have internet connectivity at home at all.
If you know that the top 10 states in the US have over half the population (55% - California alone has 12%), and you think that "almost everyone I know in online a lot -- and pretty much everyone has broadband" you should realize that you're way on one end of the "active user" continuum!
The other thing they mention in their report is that the average "active" user is now at 30.5 hours per month (an hour a day) of home use online. This means for every 4 hour per day, and 8 hours on the weekend news junkie (or porno surfer or everquest fiend) there are a lot of people who are counted as "active" users who occasionally go online to check email or whatever but who certainly don't live there.
Most tellingly, they point out that internet penetration has stabilized at around 74%.
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