Internet Access Reaches One Billion Mark

First off, my posting will be light this week… a close friend of mine is getting married next weekend, so I will be heading back to my Chicagoland home for the wedding and to catch up with friends and family!…

Anyway, it is nice to work for a company that doesn’t blink an eye when it comes to spending money on research. Other members of my team at work are responsible for competitive intelligence, consumer behavior/analysis, market research, etcetera, etcetera… and they regularly email us great summaries with the third-party reports attached. Little did I know that these reports cost so much!

The latest one I received is eMarketer’s Worldwide Online Access: 2004-2010…

According to eMarketer estimates, this year one billion people worldwide will have Internet access and nearly 250 million households will have broadband. The US is still number one in terms of numbers of Internet users and broadband households, but as digital innovation blossoms outside North America that may soon change.

Wow! One billion people online! It is estimated that there are currently 6.5 billion people on earth…

Interestingly enough, it is estimated that over 40% of US online households are still using dial-up. Are there any SEOs that are still on dial-up? How frustrating would that be? How stupid would that be? Browsing, researching, analyzing, making changes, refreshing the page… imagine waiting over five times as long for pages to load! It would be stupid not to get broadband if it is available. If I lived in an area where it wasn’t available… I’d move.

Another point I found interesting was that DSL users made up 66% of the US broadband households. I’ve only paid for cable, though I’ve used DSL… personally, I prefer cable.

I wonder how WiMAX will fit into this picture. Should I be buying stock?