84% of U.S. Adults Use the Internet

Not everybody uses the Internet, but 84 percent of U.S. adults now do so, a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project says.

As you would expect, there are some continuing adoption differences by segment.

Older adults have lagged behind younger adults in their adoption, but now a clear majority (58 percent of senior citizens uses the Internet.

As has been the pattern historically, people with college educations are more likely than those who do not have high school diplomas to use the Internet.

Likewise, people who live in households earning more than $75,000 are more likely to be Internet users than those living in households earning less than $30,000.

But all gaps have narrowed over the past 15 years, Pew says.

In fact, the biggest gains have come from the segments that historically have used the Internet less, namely older users, less-educated users and lower-income users.

Gaps in other areas also have narrowed. Today, 78 percent of blacks and 81 percent of Hispanics use the internet, compared to 85 percent of whites and 97 percent of English-speaking Asian Americans.

Those who live in rural areas still are less likely than those in the suburbs and urban areas to use the Internet. But rural Internet use rural Internet use has grown to 78 percent.

Is it Too Late for Mobile Operators to Gain Mobile Ad Share?

Is it too late for mobile service providers, telcos and cable TV operators to gain a significant share in mobile advertising? Nobody knows yet. 

It probably is not possible to get a leading share, so the point is whether it is possible to gain a significant share, across the payments, streaming and app fronts. 

If it does not prove possible, Internet service providers are going to face increased pressure in their core access business, as advertising has enabled software and content businesses in the past. 

But advertising increasingly could be the marginal contributor even for Internet access businesses, providing just the required amount of incremental revenue to enable widespread Internet access subscription models. 

The other unresolved issue is whether ISPs can create significant new managed services revenues to offset pressure in the commoditized Internet access business. 

Whether those new revenue sources come from streaming video, home security, health services or connected car apps does not matter so much. At the moment, nor does the relative revenue contribution matter so much.

What matters is discovering and creating the new managed services models to offset legacy service declines and commoditization of simple Internet access services. 

LUMA's State of the State 2015 at DMS 15 from Terence Kawaja

"Reliability" Isn't What it Used to Be, and Most of US Don't Really Mind

How to supply power to fixed network voice service phones is an acknowledged issue for fiber to home or cable TV voice services. They are, in fact, less reliable than legacy phone service when consumers do not buy optional battery power backup.

But few consumers seem to do so.

The problem of inability to use a service when the user device loses power is no longer unusual though. It applies to all Internet access services, mobile phones, cordless phones, televisions and all other consumer appliances generally.

In fact, it would be a fair generalization to say that most devices and apps using communication networks are “less reliable” than they used to be. And most users seem to adjust quite well.

There are understood protocols for services or apps that occasionally crash. One reboots. One “calls back.” One waits a few seconds or minutes. One switches to another app.

That is simply an adjustment to connectionless protocols that underpin modern apps and battery-powered end user devices.

Even in the restricted area of fixed network telephone service, most consumers long ago made decisions that ensured they would not have “telephone service” when local electrical power was disrupted.

The culprit is the cordless phone, which most consumers seem to use, when they have fixed network phone service at all. By definition, cordless phones require local electrical power to function.

So when there is a local power outage, even when the network is up and running, a customer cannot use a cordless phone.

So there is an easy solution for consumers who buy fixed network telephone service and want the ability to use their phones in the event of a local power outage: do not buy or use cordless phones.

That will be the case for some years to come. Eventually, however, battery backup is likely to be the only option for powering cordless phones or other consumer appliances in the event of local power outages.

One might argue the problem sort of goes away by itself, over time, as most consumers who care about network-powered phones tend to be in the higher age cohorts. Over time, most consumers, who do not especially worry about such things, will become 100 percent of the market.