Watching YouTube videos, downloading large pictures or communicating over webcams likely are not part of your daily home life if you live in Southwest Virginia -- so says new research.

The households in 25 Virginia counties that make up the Roanoke/Lynchburg designated market area ended last in a ranking of 79 U.S. markets for broadband use, according to New York-based Scarborough Research.

Only 29 percent of the adults in the market have high-speed Internet connections in their homes, according to the report compiled from August 2006 to September 2007.

The findings, which showed broadband use quadrupling nationwide from 2002 to 2007, shed a contrasting light on Roanoke's 2006 designation as the top digital city for its population size and Blacksburg's title as most-wired city in the world in the 1990s.

But as access improves and prices for high-speed Internet decrease each day, more residents in this market are getting connected, officials said, including those in a rural county nestled in the Allegheny Mountains.

Cox official: Roanoke not an 'early adopter' market

The results for the region aren't necessarily good news to economic development professionals who try to sell its virtues to businesses.

"This is not a statistic that you would include in your economic development prospectus," said Andrew Cohill, president and chief executive officer of Design Nine, a Blacksburg company that advises communities in broadband and telecommunications planning.

"It's very important to have widespread availability and affordability of broadband, especially from the home [for telecommuters]."

The rate of high-speed Internet usage involves access, education and income, Cohill said.

Mike Pedelty, a spokesman for Cox Communications, said the Roanoke area it serves "is not an early adopter market," though demand for Cox's broadband service is climbing.

Officials said it's important to consider what communities, especially rural locales, have access to broadband service. There are limitations to where high-speed Internet is available nationwide, and largely, it depends on which companies service which areas.

Doug Chittum, director of economic development for Roanoke County, said it's difficult to compare such demographic information.

"If you looked at Roanoke County and compared it to Bland and Tazewell, it's going to be night and day, just as broadband [use] will be night and day," he said.

For example, to access Verizon's high-speed Internet service, which uses DSL technology, customers must live within three miles of a Verizon switching office or a remote terminal, spokesman Harry Mitchell said.

Mitchell would not disclose the percentage of households in the market that have access to broadband connections through Verizon's telephone service.

But he heralded Verizon's efforts in the past few months to expand its high-speed Internet service in this region, including upgrading more than 70 terminals. In March, Verizon also introduced an ultrafast high-speed Internet service to more than 80,000 customers in 50 Virginia communities.

Late last year, Verizon Wireless launched improved high-speed wireless service in the region.

High-speed access fairly new to rural Highland

In Highland County, a remote community of about 2,510, the Highland Telephone Cooperative has offered DSL service for three years.

At least 30 percent of the company's 1,420 customers now have the service, compared with just 14 percent last year. The increase is largely because the monthly price was too high, general manager Phil Munchel said.

The company scaled back the cost to $19.95 a month, compared with about $42 a month.

Residents want high-speed Internet for personal and professional use, such as operating businesses out of their homes or telecommuting, Munchel said. Highland County is located near the eastern border of West Virginia.

"That's what allows folks to live in this area," Munchel said. "Because they have broadband, they can telecommute."

Not all area officials viewed the Scarborough results as troubling. Chittum said it is a plus that the area market made the list, because it was a report of top national markets for broadband penetration.

He also said he didn't expect it to hamper efforts to attract new businesses, because most retailers are interested only in data from an immediate area, not from an entire region.

At least one company with a Roanoke County sales and service center hasn't noticed a lack of households with high-speed Internet access.

HSN, a television, Internet and catalog retailer, is hiring 160 employees by the end of this year to work from home as sales representatives.

Employees are required to have high-speed Internet access at home to do these jobs, said Martha Donoho, operating vice president of call center operations at HSN's Roanoke County center.

Already, more than 1,400 people have applied to a recent job ad, and she said nearly 60 have been hired. All of the applicants who live within the area market said they have high-speed Internet in their homes, Donoho said.

"We think that Roanoke is the perfect area" for these employees, she said.