Okay, let's look at the residential market and other media. After Alexander invented the phone, folks of relative wealth had at best one phone in a household. Switching comes along, telephony evolves, and over time, the phone becomes a household appliance for average income families. Today, phones are fixtures in the majority of homes in the U.S., regardless of income level. Over time, one phone per residence isn't enough.
Families acquire multiple phones and add line extensions-shared access.
Fax, Internet, and personal wealth enter the picture. Technically advanced households today have primary and secondary voice lines, fax and internet modem lines, and hybrids therein-shared phone networks. Sure, we're talking about access lines for Internet-just a few PCs per consumer household, telephony alternatives over DSL and Cable are immature, LAN technology is complicated and intrusive for typical households. Ninety-nine percent own at least one PC, and better than half of these families own two or more PCs. Of the 110 million US consumer households, an estimated seventeen percent or nearly 20 million families are technically advanced.