More than half of all U.S. residential Internet users reached the Web via fast broadband connections in July, outpacing use of slower, dial-up connections for the first time, market researcher Nielsen//NetRatings said on Wednesday.
Sixty-three million Web users connected to the Internet via home broadband links, which include high-speed connections over cable television networks or upgraded phone lines using technologies like ISDN or DSL, it said.
That amounts to 51 percent of U.S. residential users, up from 49 percent in June and from 38 percent just a year earlier. Sixty-one million, or 49 percent of residential users, us narrowband hookups, down from 62 percent last July, Nielsen//NetRatings said.
Faster access times allow users to view a range of graphically richer content, including movies and more sophisticated advertising.
Narrowband connections are defined as links with speeds between 14,400 to 56,000 bits per second, typically delivered over conventional dial-up phone lines. They were critical to the first generation of commercial Internet use a decade ago.
The milestone was crossed in terms of users, but the actual number of U.S. households with broadband Internet connections remains significantly less, according to Bruce Leichtman, the principal analyst for market research firm Leichtman Research. This reflects the difference between users and subscribers, he said.
"We shouldn't really think that half of America is subscribing to broadband yet, but we may be there in a year," he said.
The number of residential broadband connections underestimates actual broadband usage because the figures do not include office connections, which many users rely on for personal Internet surfing, Leichtman noted.
U.S. broadband usage is far behind other industrial countries in Asia and Europe. For example, broadband was relied on by 91 percent of home Internet users in Japan during June, according to Nielsen//NetRatings statistics.
Despite rapid gains in U.S. subscribers over the past year, the pace of growth has slowed recently, the analysts said.
According to Leichtman, the 20 largest U.S. broadband carriers added 1.7 million subscribers during the second quarter, the lowest total in a year. The 20 largest companies have signed up 28.6 million high-speed Internet households and account for about 95 percent of the U.S. market, he said.
The 30 million or so U.S. households with broadband connections is less than one-third of the roughly 110 million households counted by the U.S. Census Bureau, Leichtman said.
"Despite a plateau in the growth of U.S. Internet access, we've seen continued high double-digit growth in users' broadband access," said Marc Ryan, an analyst with Nielsen//NetRatings.
Broadband usage was highest among subscribers under age 34, Nielsen//NetRatings said. Eighteen to 20-year-olds were the biggest users, at 59 percent, followed by young kids at 58 percent and 25- to 34-year-olds at 55 percent.
People between the ages of 65 to 99 years account for the lowest percentage of broadband users, at 34 percent.
Nielsen//NetRatings calculations are based on a long-running survey of 40,000 Internet users.