The Effects of Broadband Deployment on Output and Employment

High-speed internet access has developed rapidly in the last decade and is increasingly viewed as essential infrastructure for our global information economy. For example, as recently as mid-2000 there were only 4.1 million broadband lines in the United States and only 3.2 million of these were residential lines. Thus, in mid-2000 less than one household in thirty could access the internet at a download speed of 200 kbps or greater. Six years later, the number of broadband lines, excluding mobile wireless connections, had soared to more than 53.5 million, 49 million of which were in residences. Residential penetration had therefore risen to nearly 50 percent by the middle of last year. (If mobile wireless connections are included, total U.S. broadband lines had risen to more than 64.6 million lines.)

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