Each spring, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project conducts a survey designed to assess the state of broadband adoption by Americans and, particularly, to probe the attitudes and experiences of those who do not use broadband. Over the last decade, broadband adoption has gone from being the province of the elite to a mainstream behavior by the majority of Americans.

Yet even as broadband use has spread, there has been persistent evidence that some segments of the population are not part of the broadband adoption story. The Obama Administration has devoted considerable time and effort to promoting broadband adoption and expanding government efforts to bring it to non-user populations. Some $7.2 billion of the $787 billion federal stimulus program approved in February, 2009 was set aside for grants and mapping efforts designed to target underserved groups. Under a mandate from Congress, the Federal Communications Commission produced a major broadband plan in March 2010. The 360-page plan contained scores of recommendations for how government agencies could encourage expanded broadband access. The recommendations also pressed for changes that could allow the internet to be used to improve Americans’ lives in such areas as delivering economic growth, improving health care, facilitating advances in government services, and improving the environment.¹

This year’s Pew Internet broadband survey was conducted with that dramatically changed policy environment as backdrop. In addition to capturing data as we had in the past about the non-user cohort, we did some things this year that we had not done in the past, such as evaluating Americans’ attitudes about the “value” of a broadband connection for key activities. Further, we tried to gauge public sentiment on the key policy question: Should the government make the spread of affordable broadband a priority or not?