The latest statistics are out showing how many people connect to the internet at what speed. This is important information to keep an eye on as a web site owner.

According to the Nielsen/Netratings, 36.7% of all U.S. homes now have broadband (high speed cable or DSL) internet access.

The breakdown for homeusers in the U.S. is this:

• Most users in the US connect using a dialup modem still (63.3%)
• 51.4% use a 56kbps modem
• 9% use a 28/33.3kbps modem
• 2.9% use a 14.4kbps modem (ouch!)

Those accessing the internet at work are in better shape. Most US workers (69.8%) access the internet through high speed access such as T1 lines.

Why Should You Care?

As a website owner, it is important to keep an eye on the speed at which your visitors are accessing your site at.

At some point, the size of your web pages may no longer be an issue due to the vast majority having high speed internet access. At that point, you can safely put full streaming video, web cam videos etc on your site without any concerns.

If you take this site here as an example, I have a balancing act to do. I could offer more video content, but I realize that there may be bandwidth issues with some of my subscribers. I try to compensate for this by:

• Optimizing my online videos in the best format for quality and size
• Offering the video as an option on a separate page. When I have a video included in any of my articles, you may notice that you can read the article and then click on a link to have the video come up. I don't embed the video directly in the first page of the article. This way, I am not forcing a high band width video onto my subscribers unless they choose to view it.

Even if you don't live in the U.S., these are important trends to watch. Many times the U.S. statistics foreshadow pretty closely what happens in Europe and then the rest of the world.

(This information is available at Urlwire.com and is taken from Nielsen / Netratings).