The best part of visiting family in Chicago for Thanksgiving is the bonus time in the car reading reports. (Well that and not having to make a turkey.) Last weekend, I read up on the Exploring the Digital Nation: Computer and Internet Use at Home, a report by the Economic and Statistics Admin and NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration). I was particularly interested in how this report confirmed or conflicted with recent Connected Nation reports.

Raw data from the NTIA report comes from the results of a Census Bureau survey of about 54,300 households. Through statistical methods they have extrapolated the survey results to represent 119.5 million American households. Connected Nation used telephone interviews conducted last summer with 27,086 residents.

Here is a comparison of the results:

Household use/adoption of broadband

• NTIA – 68 percent of households used broadband Internet access service
• Connected Nation – 65 percent of residents have broadband

Computer ownership

• NTIA – 77 percent of households had a computer
• Connected Nation – 82 percent residents had a computer

Top reasons for not going broadband

NTIA

1. lack of need or interest (47 percent);
2. lack of affordability (24 percent);
3. inadequate computer (15 percent)

Connected Nation

1. Broadband fees are too expensive (18 percent)
2. No content worth viewing (18 percent)
3. Computer is too expensive (7 percent)
4. Not available (7 percent)

The final percentages (reason for not going with broadband) are a little skewed – but otherwise the numbers track, especially given that Connected Nation is looking at households and NTIA looks at residents. There were a few other nuggets in the NTIA research that struck me:

I’ve heard many talk about the growing rate of folks accessing the Internet through handheld devices – rather than desktops or laptops. The NTIA research indicates that 2 percent of those surveyed had only a handheld device. (Whereas 17 percent had a handheld and a computer; 58 percent had only a computer.) But the folks who use handheld devices are serious about their broadband…

In addition to having a stronger preference for mobile broadband Internet access, users of handheld devices were also more likely than their counterparts using only personal computers to  subscribe to fiber optic broadband services and less likely to subscribe to DSL services.