BROADBAND FINDS A FOLLOWING

“Create it, and they shall come” seemed to be the mantra for content providers for the last few years. According to new research from Jupiter, they were right on target – at least as far as broadband was concerned. In its second-quarter review of the broadband content industry, Jupiter found the cult of broadband forming around particular sites.

Some are obvious, such as cable ISP Roadrunner’s homepage, but others are more surprising: ZoneLabs a firewall software site and GamingClub, an online bookie. Jupiter also found broadband users enjoy their porno. Though not included in the study, some individual adult sites logged more than 40% of their traffic from broadband connections, but the average for most adult sites was only about 18%.

Jupiter also found that consumer cable-modem and DSL users far excelled their narrowband counterparts in taking advantage of all the Internet has to offer. Not only did broadband users flock to high-bandwidth applications, they more readily used basic narrowband services, such as news and financial info. Jupiter chalked it up to the ease and convenience of the broadband pipe. Hmm, perhaps there is something to all that “always-on reliability” marketing mumbo jumbo.
--Kevin Fitchard

Rallying the Workers
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the telecommunications industry has almost doubled its staff ranks in the last 50 years. It hasn’t always been an upward climb, however. Starting with 643,200 workers in radio/telecom in 1951, payrolls peaked in 1981 with 1.07 million workers. The Reagan years saw a steady decline, which didn’t reverse itself until 1990s. Cellular blossomed in the laconic radio business, leading to surges in employment in that sector, and in 1996 – after the passage of the Telecommunications act and the data revolution got in full swing – landline telecom started hiring again. 2001 preliminary statistics show telecom employment at its highest point, topping 1.2 million workers.