A similar trend continues into 2000, with cost losing a little importance, notably among Canadians with lower levels of education. Respondents with, at most, a high school level of education are evenly split between cost and the lack of interest in home access to the Internet as the main barriers. These results set them apart from respondents with higher levels of education, whom we more easily classify as “near users” because cost continues to be the biggest obstacle for them.

Table 3.5 displays the main barriers to home Internet access by income categories, tracking results from 1997, 1999 and 2000. It comes as no surprise that cost as a main barrier is linked to income, especially among respondents with household incomes under $20,000 per year. This is most noteworthy in 1997 and 1999, when the overall shift towards cost was uncovered among the population as a whole. By 2000, the more extreme differences and polarization by income levels seem to have attenuated to a great extent. While cost is still the most important factor among respondents with low household incomes, the overall patterns of response are more homogenous between income categories in the 2000 survey of Canadians.