Ten years ago, having Internet service in your house was still a novelty, and getting broadband (versus the still-standard dialup ala America Online) was something of a rarity. Now, that once-exotic high-speed access is a determining factor in whether or not you even buy the house:

In less than a decade, broadband has gone from a luxury to a must for many people, and for some of them, it’s started to influence their real-estate decisions. Homes that have broadband are winning out over more remote ones that don’t. Areas with better and faster broadband are becoming more desirable than ones with slower access.

Edward Redpath, a real estate broker in Hanover, N.H., said he has seen deals fall through once the buyer realizes a home doesn’t get broadband. Across the Connecticut River in Norwich, Vt., only the center of the village has cable.

The spread of household Internet service to become a de facto utility must have set a speed record. I don’t have the figures at hand, but I know that electricity took a long while — maybe half a century — to become commonplace in all American homes. Telephone, radio, and television similarly had decades-long cycles toward ubiquitous adoption. Web access still has a way to go, including some insurmountable barriers like generational divides and income levels. But now that it’s coming baked-into the real estate equation — including as part of initial housing development — I’d say the penetration is practically complete.

Having that big bandwidth at home is indeed a dealbreaker considering how many people access the Web for at-your-fingers tasks, including home-office work. Personally, I work from home half the time, and can’t imagine what I’d be doing if I didn’t have a cable modem (wireless setup, of course).

I do wonder just how permanent this dynamic’s going to be. Wiring those last-mile remote locations isn’t going to happen overnight. Will more people opt for wireless phone services that are almost as fast as broadband, to close the gap? Will the traditional model of a single Internet access point per household going to be supplanted by multiple Web access signals, delivered via phones and other direct-signal devices?