Honolulu Hot on High-Speed

When Honolulu residents say, “Surf’s up!” they are cruising at high speed. According to Scarborough Research, Honolulu is the top ranked broadband market with 40 percent of adults accessing the Internet at home in the past 30 days via ISDN, DSL, or cable modem, followed by San Diego at 34 percent, and Rochester, NY at 32 percent.

“Local media outlets can take advantage of broadband penetration in their markets — and the expanded creativity of rich content — to reach this valuable consumer group with content and advertising,” said Gary Meo, senior vice president, internet and print sales, Scarborough Research.

The lowest broadband usage was measured in the Roanoke/Lynchburg, Va. area (6 percent); Albuquerque/Santa Fe, N.M. area (8 percent); and Spokane, Wash. (9 percent)

The data, compiled from August 2001 to September 2002, was gathered from more than 200,000 interviews with adults, age 18 and over, in 75 of the Designated Marketing Areas (DMA) as defined by Nielsen Media Research.

Meo said that interview sample sizes ran from 2,000 to 10,000 and were comparable to market population. For instance, 2,000 phone interviews were conducted in Honolulu, followed by mailed questionnaires, while New York had roughly 10,000 participants and Chicago had nearly 4,000 participants.

Other findings from Scarborough’s broadband analysis:

• Honolulu’s broadband breakdown is 34 percent cable modem, 6 percent DSL.
• The San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose DMA has the highest proportion of DSL users of the markets surveyed at 18 percent.
• On average, 13 percent of the surveyed DMAs were cable modem users, compared to 7 percent DSL.

Broadband is continuing to lure Internet users away from dial-up but Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) noticed a slowdown in the number of U.S. high-speed subscribers in the second quarter of 2003. The major cable and DSL providers added a combined total of 1.55 million high-speed Internet subscribers — the lowest number of net additions since the second quarter of 2002.

“With the addition of over 1.5 million net new subscribers in the second quarter of 2003, high-speed Internet remains a very healthy business,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG. “While caution should be shown in making major assumptions based on the quarterly figures, there were some interesting changes from previous quarters that should be watched closely to see if these results become trends.”

As of the end of the second quarter of 2003, the leading cable and DSL providers in the U.S. accounted for nearly 20.7 million high-speed Internet subscribers, with cable maintaining a 64 percent share of the market. In-Stat/MDR expects the worldwide cable modem tally to hit 34 million by the end of 2003, climbing to 68 million by 2007.

While cable modem remains the broadband of choice in the U.S. with almost twice the number of DSL subscribers, J.D. Power and Associates found that dial-up Internet users who would switch to high-speed access would most likely choose to upgrade to DSL service over cable modem if both were available in their areas.

The 2003 report revealed that 52 percent who said they would switch to high-speed Internet would switch to DSL, compared to 38 percent who would choose cable. Among Internet subscribers, 74 percent use a dial-up Internet service provider, 17 percent use a cable modem, and 9 percent use DSL.

“DSL providers are having a lot of success convincing consumers that they have an advantage over cable, particularly in the area of price,” said Steve Kirkeby, senior director of telecommunication research at J.D. Power and Associates. “Price continues to be the number-one reason to switch providers among dial-up and high-speed Internet subscribers. However, widespread availability is a critical hurdle that DSL providers haven’t yet been able to jump.”