The State of the Net

It wasn't all that long ago that there were less than a million people on the Net, and people looked at you strangely when you used the term, "e-mail.% Just the other night, I was watching television and I noticed that instead of telephone numbers on many ads now, what we're given is a Web site. Those changes mark what's gone on in the last several years to make the Net a major part of business and personal life in the United States.

According to the best government figures, released in January, 2001, the Internet is now being used by over half the households in the United States. Where are those households, and what do we know about them?

We know that the households are concentrated primarily on the coasts and in major urban areas. They also tend to cluster around universities. In some urban areas the percent of connected households approaches eighty.

There are less households online in the rural areas of the United States, primarily because of infrastructure issues. Don't let that fool you, though. Farmers, especially those working full time at it, have some of the highest Internet connection and usage rates in the country.

For businesses, the usage rates are even higher. Even the smallest businesses are starting to use the Web for some very basic functions. That doesn't mean that small businesses, especially, have Web sites, though. The best research we can find on that says that only about half of the small businesses in the United States have a Web site.

It's important to note that usage rates are even higher than connection rates. That's because there are a number of households in the United States, mostly poorer ones, where there is no computer, and maybe no phone line. Many of those people still connect to the Net, using connections at work, at school, in cyber cafˇs, or public libraries.

You should also be aware that the percentage of Internet connection and the amount Internet usage has been rising steadily among households who own computers. On the usage side, we're just about approaching the top of the curve, probably running somewhere around 70-80% of the households with computers.

How these people connect is interesting as well. The majority of the households in the United States, indeed the vast majority (around 85%) use a dial-up connection to reach the Net. The vast majority of these folks are using America Online as their primary connection. Any Web site that is designed for your business should be usable and be a good experience for anyone using AOL.

In the next section, we'll review how people are using the net today.

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