Defining and Measuring Meaningful Broadband Adoption

Debates about broadband adoption have gained a new urgency in the United States alongside concerns about the flagging economy and decreased global rankings in high-speed connectivity. Broadband adoption—the process of connecting approximately 100 million U.S. residents who are not online (FCC, 2012a; Horrigan & FCC, 2010)—has become a cause of anxiety and a call to action among policy makers in recent years. The United States currently leads in technology innovation, producing many of the world’s most recognized companies, including Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, a ll of which rely on high-speed, always-on broadband connectivity. Yet, in many communities, major swaths of the population remain off the digital grid and unable to partake in broadband’s many benefits. In the Detroit, Baltimore, and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, at least a third of all residents cannot or do not go online using a residential fixed broadband connection (Fenton, 2012). 