Strategy Analytics confirms what we've already seen: broadband adoption continues to grow despite a troubled economy, as more people turn to broadband as a necessary utility instead of a luxury entertainment service. While broadband's growth rate is down from the double-digit growth of the last few years (as carriers milked dying dial-up companies of their subscribers), broadband should still grow as a 7% rate in 2009, a rate that's "pretty robust in today’s climate," according to the firm.

According to the group's latest study, recession-resistant growth means that broadband adoption in the United States should reach 80% during the next five years. Given nobody has bothered to actually go into the field and confirm current broadband penetration levels, and base data that does exist has proven dubious at best, we asked Strategy Analytics analyst Ben Piper how exactly the group came to that number.

"Forecasting is both an art and a science, so there is never 100% certainty," admits Piper. "That said, we feel confident about our methodology and forecast," he says. "The 80%+ household penetration number is predicated on a somewhat conservative 7.7% five year CAGR," (compound annual growth rate) he says, noting that he expects a lion's share of growth to come courtesy of fiber to the home and WiMax/FWA deployments.

That's curious, given that Verizon's the only major company deploying fiber -- and their deployment will dramatically slow once the company completes their $23 billion investment plan in 2010. As for Mobile WiMax, it seems that much of that technology's future remains squarely hitched to the success of Clearwire -- a company that's slowly deploying service to metro markets already covered with terrestrial broadband.