Fewer Americans not already online are going online, and fewer dial-up users today spend enough time on the web to want to use broadband, writes the E-Commerce Times, citing the Pew Internet Project's latest study on U.S. broadband growth. The May 2005 survey found that 53 percent of Americans get online with high-speed connections, up 3 percent since December 2004 - an increase described by Pew as "statistically insignificant."

"The issue is that the remaining pool of dial-up users today is a different demographic category," author of the report and Pew research director John Horrigan told the E-Commerce Times. He explains that previous dial-up users were heavy users who subsequently had a need for more bandwidth, whereas today's dial-up users in general don't go online enough to want increases in speed.

"Today's dial-up users are older, less educated and with lower income than their counterparts in 2002," he said. He added, however, that eventually there would be demand for even faster broadband, again based on heavy use.