According to a survey released this week by Kelton Research, 80% of American adults between the ages of 18 and 64 would give up their iPod rather than forfeit wireless Internet access. Similarly, when faced with a choice between their home telephone and their home Wi-Fi network, 79% opted for the latter.
Looking at demographics, Wi-Fi attachment was strongest among 40-to-64-year-olds, with 87.6% of them refusing to give it up over an iPod. Unsurprisingly, 18-to-29-year-olds were more interested in their iPods, with 27.7% of them unwilling to give up the MP3 player. Otherwise, the percentages were within two or three points of each other when breaking down the responses by male/female, Northeast/Midwest/South/West regions of the country, and rural/suburban/urban environments.
Kelton conducted the survey on behalf of the Wi-Fi Alliance, a non-profit whose stated goal is “driving the adoption of a single worldwide-accepted standard for high-speed wireless local area networking,” according to its Web site. The research firm surveyed 551 American adults who had experience with wireless Internet access in their home or home office between June 26 and June 30, 2006.