The average e-mail user in the U.S. has two or three e-mail accounts and spends about an hour every day reading, sending and replying to messages, according to the survey, conducted by Opinion Research Corp.

E-mail dependency is so strong for 41% of survey respondents that they check their e-mail in-boxes right after getting out of bed in the morning. The average user checks his in-box five times a day, according to the survey, which polled 4,012 respondents at least 18 years old in the 20 largest U.S. cities.

About a fourth of respondents acknowledged being so addicted to e-mail that they can't go more than two or three days without checking for messages. That includes vacations, during which 60% of respondents admitted logging into their in-boxes.

Unsurprisingly, all that e-mail activity sometimes leads to regrets. Almost half of respondents -- 45% -- indicated they would like to have the ability to retrieve a message they have sent but that hasn't been read yet.

There is also some attachment anxiety to sent messages. A significant portion of respondents -- 43% -- would like to be able to track where their messages get forwarded

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As the news this week shows, all that is about to change. Motorola announced a wireless broadband-over-powerline solution designed to allow the utility industry to provide high-speed access to customer homes. The solution should be a significant competitor to existing ones: Motorola cites a study that claims as many as 13 million U.S. households remain unable to receive broadband services from traditional cable modem or DSL providers, and says that its solution can bring the power of broadband to cities and municipalities underserved by current broadband providers.

Not that cable companies should be crying into their beer. Worldwide broadband cable subscribers skyrocketed 22% in 2004, reaching 41 million worldwide. Despite the growth, there was a 25% drop in worldwide CMTS revenues, to $145 million, in the first quarter of this year, after seven straight quarters of growth.

There was other network access news this week as well. The wireless network revolution is doing very nicely, thank you, as a study by Infonetics Research showed. The first quarter of this year saw record worldwide shipments of wireless LAN equipment, with an increase of 20 percent compared to the previous quarter.