What is broadband for?

timod

Good article on the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2526897.stm

What is broadband for
Bill Thompson
If you ask the advertising team at BT, NTL or Telewest what broadband is
for then they will tell you it is about a fast connection that is always
on.

As far as I am concerned, the main benefit I get from my cable modem is
that my computers are connected to the net all the time they are
switched on.

It seems that speed is the only thing that the people responsible for
selling broadband can think of as a reason for getting it.

BT's current advertising campaign, complete with celebrities and cartoon
monsters, is all about how much you can get down the broadband pipe. The
cable companies are similarly obsessed with bits per second.

Radical view

My link often is fast. In the morning I get data at 668.9
kilobits per second, which is much better than an ordinary modem will
ever give.

But come this evening and it may be a fifth of that, as everyone else in
the area starts using their machines.

If I relied on having a fast connection instead of just finding it
useful when it is, there then I would often be disappointed.

There must be more to it than speed, even for technically-proficient
users like me.

Now research from the iSociety team at economic think-tank the Work
Foundation has given us an insight into what people really think about
broadband.

They have taken the radical approach of watching how families use their
home broadband connections.

They have listened to what they say about their use of the internet,
instead of assuming that the experiences and desires of the small group
of computer experts, journalists and new media workers who made up the
first wave of UK broadband users are typical of the whole population.


The results are interesting, and challenge the way that broadband has
been presented so far.

In particular, they have pointed out something that many of us have been
saying for a couple of years now.

It is time to stop treating the internet as if it was totally separate
from the real world and accept that its importance comes from ways it is
embedded in everyday life, because real people do not see the net as
special.

Using Bandwidth

The big shock for the advertisers is that people do not notice the speed
of their broadband connection and that speed is not the main benefit
they see from it.

Not only that, but most people don't keep their computers switched on
all the time, so the always on aspect is actually pretty irrelevant too.
If you have got to turn on your PC and wait for Windows to start then
the extra time needed to dial-up is pretty insignificant.

Given that the suppliers want to turn the existing one million broadband
subscribers into five million in the next year, this is a bit of a
problem. The thing they are promoting is not actually what people want.

However it is possibly not quite as simple as it seems. For one thing,
although people might not think much about the speed of their
connection, they do use the bandwidth.

Listening to the radio while you're surfing the web, doing several
different things online at the same time, and online gaming are all
heavy users of the available bits per second.

It may well be that non-technical users just do not realise how much
speed they now want from their link. Certainly, taking a broadband user
and forcing them to connect at dial-up speeds would provoke howls of
rage very quickly.

Cost factor

One thing that does come out very strongly is that even if the
connection is not always there, because computers are turned off between
sessions, people do feel differently about broadband because it is
always on and the cost is fixed.

Not having to make a connection every time they want to check e-mail or
look up a website, and not having to worry about the connection dropping
seems to change people's attitude.


They are more relaxed about using the net and will even interrupt what
they are doing online to go and deal with other tasks like the ironing
or making meals.

What we find is a more complicated picture than the one presented in the
technology pages and adverts, where people who do not care very much for
computers or the internet are using the network in their daily lives.

They are doing this in ways which they value rather than just doing what
the providers expect them to do.

This raises one serious issue. The research shows clearly that the
comfort factor of broadband comes from not having to worry about cost,
reliability or being knocked off the net in the middle of something.

Yet internet service providers are considering putting limits on
broadband use and even charging for data transfers above a certain
monthly limit.

Introducing this sort of uncertainty could easily destroy the fragile
belief in broadband as the safe way to get online and quickly halt the
growth in broadband take-up.

It would be unfortunate if the lack of preparedness for how people
really use the net, combined with corporate greed, sabotaged broadband
in the same way that unmetered dial-up was damaged by the actions of
some companies two years ago.

DonegalMan

Easily the most sensible 'non-techie' article about broadband that I have ever read.

What's chances of Eircom taking it on board? -

Martin

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

topgold

I think there should be more people making the case that always-on connectivity with fixed IP addressing are foundation elements for online collaboration. You make remote offices work that way. That's a core element of decentralised government offices. It's part of the national spatial strategy. It would be handy to have this added to the message, when trying to remove the narrow vision of broadband from how it's presented in most places.

Bernie
Wireless Information Network Kilkenny