Broadband Internet access is a lot of things right now: It's an advantage, a
toy, a convenience, an information medium, a paradigm and a necessity. Ask
six different people about broadband access and you'll get some variation of
those six basic answers. The one thing broadband Internet access is that
everyone agrees on is that it's a standard chicken-or-the-egg argument for
most businesses and consumers. Businesses refuse to spend the money to
implement high-speed Internet to consumers until consumers will pay for
broadband content. Consumers refuse to spend the money to get high-speed
Internet access until good broadband content is available from the
businesses. Even worse is that the US Government hasn't helped matters with
the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that forces businesses to jump through
idiotic flaming regulatory hoops just to get these technologies to those
consumers that want high-speed access even if there's no "good broadband
content" readily available.
Many are asking: "What's the one thing that will make broadband ubiquitous?"
The answer is incredibly simple: Nothing. There's a better chance of an
Amish electrician offering to re-wire my house for Cat-5 Ethernet before one
single event or invention brings high-speed Internet to every boy and girl
in America.
The whole idea of the broadband as the Next Big Thing was dead when the
Internet bubble burst. Most of the dot-com-bombs that went off in Silicon
Valley, Alley and Hills (San Francisco, New York and Austin) in 2000 were
content/service providers that required their customers have broadband
access to be successful. In late 1999, Hollywood wunderkinds with huge cash
hoards like Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard tried and failed to make content
on the Internet available, touting their ideas as "revolutionary." Their
revolutionary website, Pop.com, was
to allow would-be filmmakers to create "pops" of video or animation that
would be delivered via the magic of the Internet. Of course, viewers would
also be able to see little snippets (READ: advertisements) of upcoming
movies from DreamWorks and Imagine, but Spielberg and Howard played up
Pop.com as a forum for new talent. The only snag was that these geniuses
couldn't figure out that someone in Iowa with a 56K dial-up connection on
Prodigy wasn't going to wait 45 minutes to download 90 seconds worth of
jerky, pixilated amateur video. Pop.com was supposed to be the Next Big
Thing back in 2000 but folded before it went live.
This plays to the lack of high-speed Internet infrastructure. Some have
said if the infrastructure is built for the Internet, it will spur growth in
the industry. "Build it and they will come," or in this case "Lay the
cables and people will surf." So the Next Big Thing on the infrastructure
side would be inexpensive broadband for all? No, because most people forget
in 2000, the idea of "free DSL" was a major failure. The strangling
regulatory shackles enacted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 forced
local phone companies (the people that spent billions on wiring the country
with fiber optic cable) to "compete" by allowing any and all of their
competitors have the right to siphon off of that infrastructure for cost.
In 2000, a couple of free DSL companies hoped to use this regulation to
their advantage. The idea was that phone companies would spend the millions
to put DSL infrastructure in all major cities; the free DSL company would
then offer the same service for no cost thanks to the Telco Act of 1996.
The free DSL company would make money off of incredibly obtrusive banner ads
(like Netzero and Juno used to do) plastered into the customized web
browser. When the phone companies decided not to spend the money rolling
out DSL just so their competitors could offer the same product for an
unbeatable price ("free" is pretty hard to beat) over their lines, another
Next Big Thing was pronounced dead at the scene. The folly of free DSL,
which should have been immediately obvious to everyone the second it was
announced, was no more.
Obviously there's not going to be one Next Big Thing to change the broadband
industry; it will be several technologies and events that won't all happen
at once. In South Korea and Japan, their broadband industry has developed
because of multiplayer video games coupled with a mostly urban population
and quasi state-controlled industries. In the United States, we have freer
markets and lots of wide-open populated spaces. For broadband to take off
in the U.S. it's going to take the repeal of the Telecommunications Act of
1996 and bundled deals like EarthLink and Compaq just
made to promote DSL. AOL didn't magically have 60 million subscribers -
they made sure that they bundled an AOL disk in almost every new PC sold in
the United States with a modem. Now, EarthLink will bundle DSL service with
every new Compaq PC. Expect Dell to announce something similar with SBC
Communications or AT&T very soon.
Even when all the technology materializes and the regulations stifling
broadband are lifted, it will come down to the cost. The bottom line is the
bottom line: If companies can offer broadband service to consumers at an
affordable price, we may see the so-called "Internet Economy" materialize.
Email your comments to scott@worldtechtribune.com
