New report highlights dual aspects of U.S. Hispanic broadband trends

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Dec 1, 2005 by Ronald Roach

LOS ANGELES

Young Hispanics, the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, are among the leaders in the technology movement, according to a new report issued last month by the University of Southern California's Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI).

The report, "Trends and Impact of Broadband in the Latino Community," illustrates how broadband has become the new telecommunications standard. Half of U.S. Hispanics with Internet access at home use broadband. Most of them are educated English-speakers who live in urban centers.

"Most Hispanics online are young and are using some of the most cutting-edge features of the Internet," says Dr. Elsa Macias, TRPI senior research associate. "With the expansion of broadband technology, there area variety of factors that will need to be addressed in order to further deploy broadband services within the Hispanic community."

The report says these factors include lower prices, applications geared toward Hispanic youth and Hispanic businesses, greater accessibility to broadband service and more Spanish, bilingual and culturally-relevant online content.

The report found that young Hispanics who are online tend to be savvy users with high bandwidth needs, and that Hispanics are more likely to download entertainment content and communicate via chat and instant messaging than Internet users in general.