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Last October Scarsborough Research released a study that showed that the Philadelphia area lagged behind the rest of the nation in terms of Internet penetration of the adult population. In that study, only 41.5% of local residents had internet access.
Despite ranking as the seventh largest metropolitan area in terms of population, the Philadelphia ranked only number 30 in terms of Internet penetration. In the study Washington D.C. lead the nation with 59.9% of all adults having internet access, followed closely by San Francisco (56.1%), Austin (55.5%) and Seattle (53.3).
At the time no clear explanation was available to explain the results of the survey. While one might think that many of the large cities of the nation would lag behind due to pure economics, several large urban cities had significantly higher penetration than Philadelphia, including Los Angeles (48.7%), Boston (46%) and even New York City (43.7%).
A recently released follow-up survey tracked home computer ownership in the nation. The results of this survey supported and helped explain the results of the earlier survey on Internet penetration.
In this study, the Philadelphia area ranked only 26th in terms of home computer ownership at 59%. These results closely tracked the prior study. Leading the nation in terms of home computer ownership is Salt Lake City (73%), San Francisco (72%) and Washington D.C. (71%). Once again several large urban centers ranked higher than Philadelphia including Boston (66%), Atlanta (63%), and Detroit (60%).
Clearly the financial plight of the city's public school system has something to do with these results. Without personal computers in many of the city's schools and even the limited number in the schools which do have them, there is little drive for parents to purchase home computers for their children.
The good news nationwide is that one in five households that do not currently own a computer plan on buying one in the next year.
For those of you in the Philadelphia area, if you're reading this it's likely that you do own a personal computer. What needs to be done is that those of us who do need to spread the word to those who do not. Tell your non-computer owner friends about the benefits of personal computer ownership and the great world available to them on the Internet.
Related NetLinks
Scarborough Study on
Home PC Ownership (press release)
PC Ownership Top 64
Ranking
Scarborough Study on
Internet Penetration (press release)
Internet Penetration
Top 64 Ranking
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