Love Small Town Living? Make Sure They Have the Internet

A strange thing happened when I was in Allegan, Michigan (population 4500) over the Thanksgiving holiday. I overheard the following conversation between a middle aged man and woman:

“I talked with AT&T and they said I don’t have the right cables so I can’t get the internet.”

“I called them too and I don’t have it yet either. What do you do on the internet?”

“You surf and look up things.”

“Can’t my identity be stolen on the internet? What else do I do on there?”

“You look up information. It’s cool.”

Apparently, the country has a long way to go with understanding the internet. But more interesting to me was that in this town of 4500 (which is small, but not horribly small) which is only an hour from Grand Rapids and 2 1/2 hours from Chicago, regular tax paying Americans still can’t get access to the internet in their homes. It’s not that they couldn’t afford to pay for it- they couldn’t even get it. The phone company told them they weren’t wired to get it.

Sorry, no DSL for you.

This seemed very strange to me. Living in Chicago, I just assumed that everyone was as connected as we are. That all across the country you could stroll into coffee shops and cafes and plug in your laptop and have free wifi. Not to mention in your house. What, with Cyber Monday and all? Who doesn’t have internet access in their home now? (if they want it and can afford it?)

Apparently, quite a few people are not yet on the information superhighway.

I started investigating this and it turns out that not even 3/4th of the U.S. population has access to the internet. From Internet World Stats:

But at least we’re kicking b*tt versus other countries.

What a source of pride! Our kids watch more YouTube videos than yours. Nah, nah, nah, nah.

These stats make me think that there is a bright future for the likes of, say, Google and their ever growing ad revenue. The internet has a long way to grow if these statistics are correct.