With 95 percent of Iowa's residents and businesses being able to get a broadband connection, broadband availability is not a problem in the state.
Despite the near-ubiquity of broadband in Iowa, a new Iowa Utilities Board illustrated that "45 percent of households did not want broadband, 31 percent did not own a computer and 21 percent claimed broadband access was too expensive."
The study also revealed that only 10 percent of the households surveyed in the study revealed that availability was an issue. However, that 10 percent was primarily relegated to rural areas where availability gaps were larger than in more urban areas.
Of course, there are various ways to define broadband. Even though the Utilities Board study defines a 768 Kbps connection as broadband, the reality is that 3 Mbps is the more relevant speed standard.
Given the new applications that broadband can enable, Iowa's study could be another sign that states overall need to better educate the residential and business community on how broadband can be used to enable services such as job searching, medical and education applications.
For more:
- The Telegraph Herald via AP has this article
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