I recently got back from the XMPie UGC held in Las Vegas. What impressed me was the rate at which technology at these conferences has changed and how high-speed, ubiquitously available broadband has impacted all of our lives. Several presenters were demonstrating live applications that seamlessly connected to servers, desktops, devices and cloud computing assets from as near as California to as far away as  Florida, Australia, United Kingdom and Israel. These capabilities are astounding as compared to even five years ago. To me this shows that innovation and future economic vitality for most organization is tied to speed and availability of high-speed, low-cost Internet connectivity.

I’ve been involved with the issue of broadband services availability and price for over a decade. It still startles me that many people, (business, government, otherwise), do not grasp how standardized Internet protocol connectivity has and will continue to transform all forms of human communications. Because of this, higher speed lower cost broadband Internet access services are a crucial infrastructure for global competitiveness. While I see that the United States continued to fall further behind the world leaders, the gains over the past 20 years have been very impressive.

Fifteen years ago 28.8 Kbps analog modems where the norm for home and small business access. A few corporations had Internet access typically via 56 Kbps through 1.544 Mbps connections. Most wide area network connections were for companies inter and intra connections for packet switching and dedicated EDI connections. Open TCP/IP based connections were just beginning in popularity. In 1995 when Trekk first opened its doors, access to the World Wide Web and resultant demand for web sites was beginning to explode. And with the popularity, competition for access increased.

Home access in the US today is delivered via hybrid fiber and coax cable modems or through copper fiber hybrid digital subscriber line solutions. Where available, home connection speeds range from 2 to 20 Mbps download and 0.3 to 3 Mbps upload. I pay $45 per month to Comcast for a typical connection of 10 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload. Business connection availability varies widely, but in our area we can purchase T1 at 1.544 Mbps, multiple T1, fractional T3, T3 at 44 Mbps and higher from multiple Internet Service Providers. A typical T1 connection will run around $400-$600 per month.

It sounds like we’ve come a long way doesn’t it? By any measure, access speed and price have tumbled by at least a factor of 20 since 1995. You can test your access at home or work at http://www.speedtest.net/. Then compare your speed with the world. SpeedTest.net ranks the US average download speed of 6.2 Mbps the 22 fastest and average upload speeds of 1.3 Mbps at 27th fastest. Does this sound good to you?

In fact, the U.S. continues to fall behind the world leaders in broadband penetration, speed and price. The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development tracks many factors affecting economic development, including technology and infrastructure. You can view all of the statistics at the OECD Broadband Portal. The OECD currently ranks the U.S. at 15th in penetration, 13th for average price, and 19th for average speed. When you put these figures in terms of average cost per advertised Mbps, the U.S. end up in the middle at $10.

But take a look at the difference. The world leaders offer rates that are one third or less. This is because the technologies they are deploying deliver speeds that are 5 to 10 times faster. Where the U.S. delivers the preponderance of access via cable, the leaders deliver a substantial amount via fiber to the premises. This is exactly where our broadband policy and telecommunications regulations have failed us. Our system has not found a public/private solution to entice our incumbent carriers or challengers to invest in FTTP. In fact, the Verizon FiOS project is the only investment by a major carrier that is working toward this goal.

So why should you care? Think about your network at the office, even wired and wireless network at your home. The office probably has a combination of 100 and 1000 Mbps connections; some are starting to deploy 10 Gbps. At home, you probably have a combination of 100 Mbps wired and 60 Mbps wireless. Your Internet connection operates at a fraction of these speeds. Think about how things change if the WAN operates at or near the bandwidth of your LAN. The location of the server assets and the location of you and your co-workers become irrelevant. The providers of internal versus external services become irrelevant. Competition for everything from storage to applications to collaboration tools to information itself increases dramatically. Think about how much of you day is spent using your workstation and with these assets. As competition drives up choice and drives down prices… I think you can see why broadband is the lifeblood of economic vitality.

Don’t just take my word for it, there are plenty of people trying to shake up the status quo and get America in the broadband infrastructure investment track. Take look at a couple of articles by Richard Florida, Nicholas Carr, and Kenneth Corbin. Cloud Computing vendors already offer many  of the competitive solutions at much lower cost than traditional internal IT can offer. What stands in the way is world-class broadband availability. It is not the technology; just ask Japan. As you can see by this post, I’m not the only one asking. And I haven’t even talked about wireless!

Posted by JA Stewart at 05/25/2009 11:34:01 AM |