A second digital divide has emerged, separating the high-speed connected class from the slow-poke modem folk
When it comes to Internet connectivity, speed matters. It’s not enough to be connected to the Web—today the new digital divide is about dial-up versus DSL. Having a too-slow and pokey online connection will severely impact people’s online experiences, and even limit their digital fluency.
A new study from the Communications Workers of America measured the network of download speeds in the USA and found that consumer’s online experiences vary dramatically, depending on how many megabits per second they can download. Not surprisingly, urban areas have faster Internet coverage than rural places—because the dense population in the city makes it commercially viable for broadband ISPs to set up shop.
For dial-up customers, the experience of attempting to play online games, view web video, or access graphic- and widget- heavy social network sites, (at all, or without head-exploding levels of frustration) is often an endurance test. And although it could be argued that YouTube and Myspace or Facebook are not important but rather purely diversionary, leisure, entertainment media—we know that increasingly these online communication tools are being used for e-commerce, for professional networking, and even for news distribution. Without adequate access to these mainstream online sites, it’s easy to feel left behind and disconected from the information flow of digital culture. Whether it is searching for health information or watching sports coverage, contributing to the office wiki or downloading TV or music files—a sufficiently fast and reliable download rate at home and the office certainly makes our increasingly multimedia lives easier.
In their book Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of Iowa concluded that there is a link between having broadband and developing true digital fluency. They also found a correlation between having broadband connectivity and engaging in forms of civic participation online. Those users with adequately robust connectivity and download rates are far more likely to explore, experiment, join communities, create and connect online, than are those for whom the online experience is an impossibly slow and dragged-out dial-up ordeal.
(These same researchers released a new study last week, with results that confirmed the “original” digital divide—which is about access—remains in effect for city neighborhoods where many Spanish-speaking residents and seniors live. They also tracked the correlation between (any speed) home Internet access and household income level—finding persistent patterns linking poverty to wwweb disconnectivity.)
However having broadband does not necessarily lead to greater levels of online video viewing—this from a study (by Deloitte). Of the 2,000 TV viewers they interviewed, 50% said they would not significantly increase their consumption of web videos or TV shows online if they had broadband at home. These findings echo the conclusions reached by another research project, which showed that TV and online videos are complimentary and convergent media technologies—they do not displace or cancel each other out. This is primarily because in fact, many viewers are watching two screens at once.
But back in the world of dial-up, rural folks struggle with inadequate Internet access—which might keep them from doing things that the high-speed class takes for granted, such as uploading photos or checking email. The bottom line is that “dial up doesn’t do it,” proclaims (Minnesota’s) Fergus Falls Daily Journal online—and many agree.
Here in Canada, the number of households with broadband connections sits at 95%—this despite Canada being the third most expensive place to get broadband, as compared to the 30 countries that belong to the OECD.
