Here's an oddball report about high-speed internet use on ABC News: In summary, it decries the fact that only 1 in 4 rural internet users have high-speed connections, citing either lack of availability, expense, or lack of need for the product. It also wails about the great misfortune of minorities' lack of access to high-speed internet, and complains that we are lagging behind other nations who are not even competitors to us in the field of trade.

I put forth two potential reasons:

a.) Americans, trained by two decades of ever-downward-spiraling price pressures in consumer electronics, are trained to wait, wait, wait until big screen TVs are $49, and high-speed access is $5.00/month, and:
b.) Those "non-competitor" nations are the ones who have all the employees of the businesses the tech industry outsourced our jobs to, so they need high-speed access to send their code back to their contractors here in the U.S. ;@)

The only reason America needs high-speed access is so that perverts don't have to wait too long for their porn to download!