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By TIMES WIRES
Published June 5, 2006

More switching to broadband Net access

Middle- and working-class Americans signed up for high-speed Internet access in record numbers in the past year, apparently lured by a price war among phone companies. Broadband adoption increased 59 percent from March 2005 to March 2006 among U.S. households with incomes between $30,000 and $50,000, according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. It increased 40 percent in households making less than $30,000 a year. Among blacks, it increased 121 percent, according to the study. Middle- and lower-income households still lag higher-income households when it comes to broadband adoption. Among the $30,000-$50,000 households, 43 percent have broadband, compared with 68 percent for those making more than $75,000. Overall, 42 percent of adult Americans, or 84-million people, have broadband, compared with 30 percent a year ago. The average monthly fee for DSL was $32 in December, compared with $41 for cable. A year and a half earlier, DSL cost almost as much as cable.

Cingular, Sprint call each other out over ads

Cingular Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. are headed for a court showdown over the accuracy of heavily hyped but largely unsubstantiated advertising claims about their networks. Cingular says Sprint's claim that "no one has a more powerful network" is false. Sprint, meanwhile, says there's no evidence to support Cingular's "fewest dropped calls" claim. Sprint initially took its challenge to the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau, but Cingular has raised the stakes by moving the entire dispute into federal court in Atlanta, where it apparently intends to lay out the private third-party data on which it based its claim. All of the major wireless carriers except T-Mobile like to boast about their networks in advertising. Verizon says its network is the most reliable. Sprint says no one has a more powerful network in cities such as Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, New York, Phoenix, and Atlanta. Cingular says it has the fewest dropped calls nationally and the best and most reliable network in specific markets, such as San Francisco.

Microsoft develops pay-as-you-go computing

Microsoft Corp. has developed technology for people to pay by the hour to use a computer in their own homes, similar to the way many people use prepaid cards for cell phones. The technology, called FlexGo, will be used as part of efforts to sell computers to lower-income consumers in developing countries. The program will generally work like this: a user will pay for about half the cost of the computer upfront, and then will buy prepaid cards to get hourly access to the computer at home. If the prepaid card runs out and the user doesn't buy more hours, the computer stops working until the user buys another card. The prepaid hours will go toward paying off the computer. The users will need at least occasional dial-up Internet access to participate in the program. It will initially feature mid- range PCs running the consumer version of Microsoft's Windows operating system.

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- TIMES WIRES

[Last modified June 2, 2006, 12:12:26]