Broadband in the US is lagging (no pun intended) behind the rest of the world, both in terms of adoption rates and in speed. According to the OECD, the percentage of American households with broadband Internet is ranked fifteenth in the world. Even worse, the OECD defines “broadband” as “256 kbps and up”, which many would probably agree is a pretty paltry speed in this day and age. The FCC even used to define it as a mere 200 kbps—which isn’t even four times as fast as an old 56K modem—although thankfully, it seems to have been bumped up to 768 kbps or higher, which is a bit better.
Now, if you follow that link and read the first two Excel spreadsheets (curse you, OECD, for not providing PDF or HTML versions of this data!) you’ll see that it isn’t quite as bad as it sounds: first, the US has the highest number of overall broadband subscribers of any country; second, most of the countries with higher adoption percentages are countries far smaller than the US (Britain, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, S. Korea, etc.). Naturally, it’s a lot easier to wire up the entirety of small countries than it is a continent-spanning nation that’s quite spread out, as much of the US west of the Mississippi River is.
Still, if you want to get broadband Internet service in the US, your options—even in a major metro area like New York or Chicago—are limited. In most Chicago neighborhoods, you’re limited to Comcast cable service and either Verizon or AT&T DSL service. That’s it; there are virtually no broadband alternatives. (Clear’s WiMax service has only recently appeared in Chicago, so we’ll have to see how that goes.) Now, I could editorialize for quite a long time about competition in the Internet, TV and phone service markets, but I won’t bore you with that, as it’s only my opinion, it’s often debated by people far smarter than I and it tends to spark political flame wars.
There have been some interesting developments in broadband lately, though. Google, for example, spent a lot of money after the dot-com bubble burst buying up unused fiber and they recently announced a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service that they are looking to set up in test markets and that they may later roll out elsewhere. The chief feature of this service is astonishing: Google plans to give users of this service one gigabit/second connections, straight to their house, which would make a user’s Internet connection almost as fast as the hard drive on her computer (though, of course, the actual speed of any data transfer is limited to the slowest leg of the journey). Also interesting is the fact that they intend to license out this service to others, meaning we could actually see a resurgence of “boutique” ISPs—local service resellers—rather like the ones we had in the early 1990s (and that were killed off by mega-ISPs like AOL, cable companies and telephone companies in the late 1990s).
Google has stated in the past that the more people that use the Internet, the better it is for Google, so I’m not entirely surprised that they’re doing this (though I was surprised at the speeds they’re looking to achieve). Still, it gives me some hope that if they do roll out an ISP, it might present a real “third option” (or, if small companies can resell the service, even fourth, fifth and sixth options) and some much-needed competition in telecommunications for America, which can really only be a good thing for users. (Hooray for supply and demand!) I think a broadband price/service war is brewing in America. It may not have started yet, but if a few things fall into place, it could start as early as a year or two from now.
However, just giving everyone a fast Internet connection isn’t enough; The Internet can be a dangerous place for a novice and so there also needs to be a program of education about using the Internet effectively and safely…and, as a matter of fact, that is exactly the conclusion to which a recent FCC survey came. The New York Times recently ran an AP article that says as much:
The Federal Communications Commission’s first-ever survey on Internet usage and attitudes concludes that those who aren’t connected today need to be taught how to navigate the Web, find online information that is valuable to them and avoid hazards such as Internet scams.
Boy, do we ever need more of this! If I had a penny for every bogus offer and slimy con I’ve gotten in my email over the years, I could retire a wealthy man by now. Goodness knows how many people get suckered by these things every year and with the economy sucking as hard as it has for the last year, I’ve seen far too many library patrons willing to sign up for un-guaranteed loans from god-knows-who on the Internet. I even ran into a patron last year who bought into a scam—despite my warnings that it was such—that would, for a monthly fee, “put her on a list for whom their ‘thousands of members’” would pray. (Not that I’m against prayer, but I guarantee that just one look at this email she showed me would have told you it was an obvious scam, too.) Scams are like cockroaches: if I see one patron getting taken in, there are many more I haven’t seen who have, too.
Education about how to use the Internet—not just technically, but also practically and safely—is where I think we’re really hurting in the US. I am occasionally reminded that the Internet is still very much the Wild West: there may be lots of civilized places out there, but there’s also quite a lot of uncharted territory, too, and people need to be mindful of what they’re doing, who they’re giving their info to and what happens after they do. (It was only fifteen years ago that I first started using the Internet and I don’t mind telling you that as a naïve teen, I made some pretty stupid mistakes that I would scold my younger self for if I could.) Since then, the pace and sophistication of technology has only accelerated, to the point where today it is shockingly easy to get your identity stolen.
I don’t know how to get around this other than for teachers, librarians, writers of “how to use the Internet” books and the like to educate as many people as we can. Unlike other media that came before the Internet (such as radio and television), the Internet’s two-way nature offers great power to people and, as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben once told him, “With great power comes great responsibility”. I fear that as the supply of broadband Internet service goes up and prices come down, there will be growing pains as people adjust to the full scope of this truly awesome medium. The big question is: will millions of people outgrow those pains or succumb to them?
Tags: Broadband, Google, Internet, User Experience, Users
