Federal Communications Commission reports jump in broadband usage in US

The usage of broadband connectivity in the United States grew by almost 34%. This includes the businesses and individual users who subscribed to hi speed broadband connections provided by the various ISPs in the country. This report was released by the Federal Communications Commission as per which the net broadband lines in the country has now exceeded 38 million.

However, internationally the nation is still lagging behind 15 other countries worldwide in the density of the broadband connections. The country officials reflect this figure on the subsidized availability of net connections in other countries for this deficiency. The second half of the last year saw US adding around 5.4 million new connections. This is an improvement over 4.3 million connections for the first half of 2004.

Most of these new customers preferred to get high-speed Internet from cable companies instead of the popular mode of getting DSL connections from their telephone companies. Cable companies alone on their network added around 5 million customers during the last year for a total figure of 21.4 million connections. In comparison, there are only 13.8 million DSL based connections in the US.

There is high competition between the cable and DSL based ISPs in the American market with Cable having the advantage of faster connectivity and better services.