High speed internet connections continue to enjoy exponential growth across US businesses and homes, the Federal Communications Commission reported last week.
Overall growth reached 34% in 2004, with 37.9 million high speed connections in use by businesses and homes by the year end. Of this total, 13.8m were DSL (digital subscriber lines) lines, supplemented by 21.4 million lines using a cable modem - a year-on-year increase of 30%.
In addition, other methods of connection to the web, such as wireless and satellite, increased by 50% to 500,000 last year, while fiber and broadband-via-powerlines use rose 16% to 700,000.
The latter channel is attracting some serious money, according to the Wall Street Journal. A new company, the Current Communications Group, was recently formed to exploit the powerline medium. It has attracted over $100 million (€84m; £58m) in investment from Google, Goldman Sachs and the Hearst Corporation
Speaking last week to WSJ, FCC chairman Kevin Martin said: "The dramatic growth in broadband services depicted in [the FCC] report proves that we are well on our way to accomplishing the president's goal of universal, affordable access to broadband by 2007."
Data sourced from Wall Street Journal Online; additional content by WARC staff
