Nearly half (47 percent) of all adult Americans now have a high-speed Internet connection at home, compared with 42 percent in early 2006 and 30 percent in early 2005, according to a February 2007 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, reports MarketingCharts.

Some key findings of the Pew "Home Broadband Adoption 2007" report:

• Some 71 percent of US adults now use the Internet at least occasionally from some location; of these, 94 percent have an internet connection at home.

• Among adults with a home Internet connection, 70 percent go online using a high-speed connection, compared with 23 percent who use dial-up.
• The growth in the number of home high-speed connections from 2006 to 2007 was just 12 percent, trailing the 40 percent increase from 2005 to 2006, when many people in the middle-income and older age groups acquired home broadband connections.

"The moderate growth in home high-speed adoption from 2006 to 2007 is partly a reflection of strong prior-year growth; the low-hanging fruit was picked in 2005," said John B. Horrigan, Associate Director of Research at the Pew Internet & American Life project and author of the report.

"Luring remaining hard-to-get adults to home broadband is likely to involve showing them the relevance of online content."

MarketingCharts offers up more findings from the Pew study.