COMMENT
Written whilst driving from Ashville to Durham, North Carolina, and despatched via a free company wi-fi service that appeared on my screen in the downtown area
After more than 15 years of discussion and debate I am picking up some interesting vibes relating to broadband across North America and elsewhere.
After degrading the broadband definition to much less than 2Mbps, and endlessly wondering why people would want more, and what would they do with it, governments, regulators, telcos, cable cos and ISPs are starting to realise the Japanese and Koreans got it right. A dedicated 100Mbps service is a minimal specification and 1,000Mbps looks like a more realistic target for a vibrant 21st century economy.
A few copper and wireless rollout programmes appear to have recently been stopped whilst the incumbents consider their position and technology options. The good news is the necessary optical fibre technology has been ready to go these past 15 to 20 years, and the civil engineering costs still dominate the full rollout equation.
And best of all, the cost of ownership is far less than any copper alternative, even for basic telephony. The bad news is there has been around 20 years of investment in the wrong technologies (ie more copper cables and DSL) and any abrupt change of course now is really going to hurt!
Are there any other limiters to the rollout of fibre to home and office? If there are, manufacturing the cables and terminal equipment isn't one of them! Most likely we are going to see a skills gap in the area of installation. Rollout could be limited by people, rather than equipment or investment.
On the upside, we may be able to use wireless drops for the last 100 metres to save a significant amount of time and money getting directly into home and office. There are also bandwidth aggregation technologies that might just help a little in the interim.
Are there any other choices? As far as I can see the only other options are a reduced GDP at a national level followed by a rapid slide down the global economic scale of productivity.
Beyond the creation of new industries and the transformation of the old, internet communication is about the only technology that allows us to offset travel and the associated burning of a lot of oil. But in this regard, we need big screens, hi-fi sound, telepresence technologies and more to make it work. And this we have, except we don't have the bandwidth necessary to get the level of realism of connection and communication to make it really work.
Hopefully the GDP threat will tip the balance where all previous logic, technology, economic and futurism arguments have failed. Fingers, wires and fibres crossed that we can catch up in time - the leaders in the field are way ahead and stealing more than a march!
Comments
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1. Jyoti Banerjee
Instinctively, I feel that increasingly we need to tie economic performance to the capabilities of our IT infrastructure. In that regard, I applaud Peter Cochrane's statement about the need for 100-1000 Mbps connections in the UK. But I would love to see what evidence is available, or what thinking has been done, to put some bones on the symmetry between slow infrastructure and falling GDP growth rates.
I reiterate: Its not that I question the connection between the two - I am just keen to see what sort of evidence is available.
2. Knut Boehnert
Statistics?
With regards to correlation between bandwidth and increased productivity the problem to see the correlation now is a data set that is at best ill defined and incomplete.
Out of this data anyone can predict anything now. Simply because we don't have real evidence of a correlation - just a good gut feeling.
So the question is: Do we wait till the evidence is there?
Imagine Columbus was delayed till he had proof that nothing would have stopped him discovering India along the west route?
In my opinion that is the point where we are now. Prepare the infrastructure (speak bandwidth) and allow all sorts of services and industries to use it - and at this point there is no guarantee or evidence that it will be there. Or wait till we know - at which point all the waiting might mean that the chance is lost to discover a brand new continent of opportunities.
3. Anders Comstedt
You are absolutely right! But the thing is that this is so mixed into other growth factors, being an enabler, that even those of us that have been looking for thees studies for years fail to show the correlation in a simple way.
That, and a correlation to competition/innovation on top of any such infrastructure, is what economists should work on. But, no it is all about if USO should be 200k or 2Mb/s... Go for it Peter!
4. Dick Winchester
I agree with Peter's view. However, I have to remind myself that this is the UK and we have to deal with OFCOM which is much more interested in competition than quality. The result is companies offering free broadband and the consequence of that will be lower levels of investment in the infrastructure. Add to this that we don't do any of the technology anyway and I can't see 1Gb super broadband coming anytime soon.
5. anonymous
It's alright P.Cochrane slagging off the Western world regarding 2mbs speeds on Broadband.But just why are we not keeping up with the Japanese.opr is there something better to come in the future?That will knock the Japanese off their pedestal.