50% of Americans with income under $30000 have no Internet access

While broadband adoption in the United States has tripled in the past three years, overall Internet penetration remains flat, with the percentage of households with any kind of Internet access stuck at about 60%. Among 15 nations with the biggest broadband markets, the United States ranked 13th in market penetration in 2003. Leading the pack were South Korea, Hong Kong, Canada, Iceland and Taiwan, according to the ITU World Telecommunication Indicators database. Americans pay 20 times as much as the Japanese for broadband access. Quoting Business Week, the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union report says U.S. consumers pay about $35 a month for a 1.5-megabit-per-second connection, compared with about $25 a month in Japan for a 26 megabits a second. While half of American consumers with incomes over $75,000 a year have broadband access, half of those who earn less than $30,000 have no Internet service at all.