According to Robert Shapiro, chairman of Sonecon LLC, economic models indicate broadband access would “reach universality” without government intervention in the market by about 2016.

Robert Shapiro, chairman of Sonecon LLC, said that the differences in diffusion of Internet access across different income groups was “closer to a digital lag than a digital divide,” with lower income people adopting these technologies at the same rate as higher income people, but with a four-year lag.

$7.2 billion is not enough to provide robust broadband connectivity to all unserved or underserved homes, businesses, and institutions.

30 to 40 million households have access to broadband connectivity have not taken advantage of it.

Only 10 percent of the 400 million mobile phones in India are internet enabled and only a fraction of those individuals actually subscribe to internet service.

In India, only 10 million people have access to broadband, and most of those individuals are located in major cities, while 400 million people have mobile phones.

Broadband grants will be given to companies that can provide broadband to census areas where 90% of households have no access to wireline or mobile broadband at all, where 50% have no access to wireline broadband of at least three megabytes per second, or areas where broadband is available but 40% or fewer actually subscribe to the service.

The nation’s fastest growing broadband adoption markets were all smaller, ranking at or below #50 in terms of size.

According to a 2007 analysis by U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, 63 percent of all rural households had at least one member access the Internet, compared with 73 percent of urban households.

Broadband has experienced the most significant gains in rural areas during the past two years, even though broadband penetration reamins much higher in the metropolitan and micropolitan areas.