North Carolina ranks 40th nationwide in the percentage of individuals who report living in homes with Internet access, according to Census data released this week.
About seven in 10 N.C. residents can connect to the Internet at home, according to information released Tuesday.
Nationally, about 74 percent of residents said they had home Internet connections. Northeastern and Western states such as New Hampshire (84 percent), Alaska (83 percent) and Utah (83 percent) took the lead. Mississippi was lowest at 57 percent.
North Carolina has been working hard to improve Internet access - and particularly access to faster broadband networks, said Jane Patterson, head of thee-N.C.Authority, a state agency charged with spreading Internet access.
The state's large rural population - more than 3 million, she said, ranking second only to Texas - makes wiring communities much more difficult than in a tiny, compact state such as New Hampshire.
Anita Blanchard, a UNC Charlotte professor who studies how groups and communities form online, said once people get access to the Internet, they find it easy to use, and it brings down barriers to communication.
"North Carolina is a little behind" in giving everyone access, she said, but "it's becoming like the television and the telephone. When it started [taking off] back in the mid-90s, people thought it was weird to be online interacting with other people.
"Now, it's expected that you'll be maintaining relationships online," she said.
Internet access is improving in North Carolina.
A survey conducted in 2008 by an East Carolina University professor showed that only 36 percent of N.C. homes had Internet access in 1999.
"People don't realize how rural North Carolina is," Patterson said. "It's been a long haul, an uphill climb, but we're making it."
