

The success of Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s messaging apps QQ and WeChat has helped boost the firm's market value to about $161 billion, making Tencent the most valuable Internet company in Asia. (Brent Lewin/Bloomberg)

Although the vast majority of Americans have high-speed broadband of some kind these days, that optimistic figure comes with a few caveats: Most people can choose among only a couple of service providers. Many connections aren't fast enough to handle next-gen services. And nearly one-third of U.S. households still have no broadband at all.

So, how do we get this portion of the country connected to what's become a crucial piece of the economy? The trick is to reduce the price of high-speed Internet, according to a recent federally funded study.

In a survey of 15,000 Americans who don't have broadband, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they wouldn't consider signing up for the service at any price. This reflects what we already know: That people who aren't connected largely aren't interested in being connected and don't see how it would be relevant to their lives. But the remaining third of the sample leads the researchers to this promising conclusion: