The Social Impact of Broadband Household Internet Access

Publication type

Conference Paper

Series

Broadband Europe Conference

Authors

Publication date

December 5, 2004

Abstract:

Broadband changes everything. Or so we are told. But does it? There is only one way to find out - follow people who move from narrowband to broadband internet access and see what changes. This paper reports exactly this kind of analysis using data from a 2 wave European panel study (e-Living) to see if switching to broadband increases the time spent online, decreases the time spent watching TV, increases the amount of online spend and decreases the amount of other leisure activities. The results suggest, in the main, that switching to broadband made little difference for this group of early broadband adopters who were already heavy internet users and who already spent more online than those who did not switch to broadband. There is also no evidence of a TV or social leisure substitution effect.

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