Broadband Adoption by SMEs in the United Kingdom (UK)

Introduction Broadband is a relatively new phenomenon that has attracted some attention in the last few years. According to Firth and Kelly (2001), the term broadband has no established definition and varies from country to country. The term usually covers varying high-speed access technologies including Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), cable modems, satellite and Wireless Fixed (Wi-Fi) Networks. Broadband provides an 'always on' and faster Internet connection than dial up and promises to improve Internet use. There are many benefits that have been related to the adoption and use of broadband such as productivity (Lee, 2002). Small/medium size enterprises (SMEs) in particular could experience growth from an increase in productivity resulting from greater process efficiency and improved information exchange (OECD, 2003; BSG, 2004). This study aims to look into the usefulness of broadband to SMEs while identifying factors that affect the uptake of new technologies by SMEs There has been considerable interest in home use of broadband (Aronsson et al., 2003; Choudrie et al., 2003a), users' online habits, (Dwivedi and Choudrie, 2003; Stanton, 2004) and factors influencing adoption of broadband (Lee and Choudrie, 2002). Additionally, a substantial amount of research has been carried out in relation to pricing for broadband services (Falkner et al., 2000; Yaïche et al., 2000). Despite all the interest in broadband, there seems to be little or no information on its use within the SMEs.