However, in a report released Sunday, the Pew Internet Project says that the broadband gap -- while still significant -- is narrowing between rural dwellers and those who live in urban and suburban areas.
In 2003, only 9 percent of rural residents had home broadband service. Their city counterparts were more than twice as likely to have service -- 21 percent for urban dwellers and 23 percent for suburban dwellers.
By the end of 2005, the percentage of rural residents with broadband had more than doubled, to 24 percent. Urban and suburban penetration had gone up somewhat less, to 38 percent and 40 percent respectively, an increase of two thirds or less.
Even so, in absolute terms, suburban and urban penetration made the most gains in percentage points, underlying the fact that America has a long way to go to give rural areas the same access to high-speed service that many urbanized areas enjoy.
"Rural broadband users are no different than home high-speed users elsewhere; they go online more often and do more online activities than dial-up users," said the report's principal author, John B. Horrigan.
"But with a lower proportion of broadband users in rural America than elsewhere, the result is that rural Americans, in aggregate, have a more distant relationship with the Internet than urban and suburban Americans," said Horrigan, Pew Internet Project associate director.
Rural homes often are too far from telephone company offices to get DSL service, and usually aren't served by cable companies. That leaves them with few options for high-speed service.
One possibility is for Internet service from satellite providers, but at a substantial cost.
Electric utilities have investigated "broadband over power line" (BPL) service that would provide Internet service delivered through electrical outlets. But its use has been hampered by technological issues, particularly BPL's potential interference with radio signals by amateur radio operators and others.
Wireless companies have begun offering Internet service in some rural communities, but its spread is still limited.
AT&T Inc., formerly SBC Communications Inc., announced earlier this month that it plans to make DSL available at all its central offices, including those in small towns, by the end of 2006.
However, the speed of a DSL line falls steadily as it goes out from a switching office, meaning that residents beyond three miles or more still would not be able to get DSL.
That means that a lot of rural homes must rely on dial-up service, which is significantly slower than broadband service.
The Pew project found that about 62 percent of rural adults had Internet access by the end of 2005, compared with 70 percent in urban and suburban areas. That 8 percent gap is about half what it was in 2003, Pew said.
But the higher percentage with dial-up service -- 29 percent for rural Americans as opposed to 21 percent for others -- means that a rural resident is less likely to use the Internet as intensely than his city counterparts.
"The differences among rural and non-rural users are not a function of the "rural-ness" of the respondents," the report said. "That is, a person from rural America, by virtue of where he or she lives, does not have less interest in going online or doing a lot of things online on a given day."
But a low-speed connection is directly tied to the level of Internet usage, the report said. "In fact, having a high-speed connection at home is the single largest explanatory factor behind intensity of online use -- an effect that has grown between 2002 and 2005."
But in a few activities, rural users rely more on the Internet than suburban or urban residents, Pew said. "Rural internet users are more likely to take classes for credit online, download screensavers, and download video games," the report said.
"For certain things, like taking classes online, the Internet is a real `distance-killing' benefit for rural Americans," said Katherine Murray, research assistant for the project and co-author of the report.
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(c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services via Newscom.
