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.

Local Market Broadband Usage
Rank	DMA	%
1	Honolulu	40
2	San Diego	34
3	Rochester	32
4	Austin	31
5	San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose	31
6	Providence/New Bedford	29
7	Boston	29
8	Las Vegas	28
9	Syracuse	27
10	New York	26
11	Detroit	25
12	Seattle/Tacoma	25
13	Raleigh/Durham	25
14	Tampa/St.Petersburg/Sarasota	25
15	Kansas City	25
16	Albany/Schenectady/Troy	25
17	Los Angeles	24
18	Dallas/Fort Worth	22
19	Wichita/Hutchinson	22
20	Phoenix	22
21	Orlando/Daytona Beach/Melbourne	22
22	Norfolk/Portsmouth/Newport News	22
23	Jacksonville/Brunswick	21
24	Portland	20
25	Buffalo	20
26	Mobile/Pensacola	20
27	Cincinnati	20
28	Atlanta	20
29	Baltimore	20
30	New Orleans	20
31	Pittsburgh	20
32	Flint/Saginaw/Bay City	20
33	Philadelphia	20
34	Denver	20
35	Houston	19
36	Cleveland	19
37	Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto	19
38	West Palm Beach/Fort Pierce	19
39	Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem	19
40	Hartford/New Haven	19
41	Memphis	18
42	Chicago	18
43	Columbus	18
44	Charlotte	18
45	Minneapolis/St. Paul	18
46	San Antonio	18
47	Oklahoma City	17
48	Miami/Ft.Lauderdale	17
49	Nashville	17
50	Washington, D.C.	17
51	Milwaukee	16
52	Knoxville	15
53	Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo/Battle Creek	14
54	Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville/Anderson	14
55	El Paso	14
56	Fresno/Visalia	14
57	Birmingham	13
58	Salt Lake City	13
59	Richmond/Petersburg	13
60	Wilkes-Barre/Scranton	13
61	Indianapolis	13
62	Harrisburg/Lancaster/Lebanon/York	12
63	Louisville	12
64	Tucson	12
65	Fort Myers/Naples	12
66	Charleston/Huntington	12
67	Tulsa	11
68	St. Louis	11
69	Dayton	11
70	Des Moines/Ames	11
71	Toledo	10
72	Lexington	10
73	Spokane	9
74	Albuquerque/Santa Fe	8
75	Roanoke/Lynchburg	6
Broadband users = consumers who have accessed the Internet in the past 30 days and have an ISDN, DSL, or cable modem access to the Internet from their home.
Source: Scarborough Research

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.”