I recently spotted a meme over on 9gag that showed that right at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid lies something that most of us take for granted these days – Wi-Fi connectivity. Now I had a real good laugh over that, but have you ever wondered just how many folks in the US have yet to use the Internet? After all, it is 2013 now, and long gone are the days of the dial-up connection and 56k modems. In fact, 98% of the US is said to be able to access some kind of broadband Internet service today. The thing is, The New York Times reported that approximately 20% of US residents do not use the Internet – at all. That means they are not connected be it at home, at school or at work, and would most probably use a feature phone, too. 20% would translate to roughly 60 million people, which is a whole lot.
This has definitely gotten the US government concerned, since the percentage remained more or less the same since 4 years back, when the Obama Administration rolled out a $7 billion program to expand broadband Internet access to different parts of the US. It would be nice to hear why the remaining 20% remain averse to the Internet, but since they aren’t online, they can’t leave a comment here and tell us why. Hopefully Google’s Project Balloon will be able to change things eventually.
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