I don’t know if you’ve been following the development of
Google Fiber, but you can read more about it here if you want to. In many parts
of the country, including Central Michigan, the prevailing Internet speeds can
run as low as 1bps or lower, and even advanced systems rarely exceed 30 mbps. With
a limited number of companies competing in each market there isn’t usually any
need to upgrade either the systems or the service provided; after all, if your
competition is offering a top speed of 10mbps and you can offer 12, you’re 20%
faster. There are satellite-based systems that can do better, but most of them
are relatively expensive, and you are still limited in where you can get them…
Google is building its own fiber-optic delivery systems and
offering to provide speeds in excess of 1,000 mbps in an increasing number of
medium-sized cities around the US, which does sound like it would be an
advantage over a system operating at 1% or less of that speed. Moreover,
Frontier Communications currently has a monopoly on broadband service in
Portland, and has therefore never had to worry about the competition in terms
of download speed or anything else. But as much as it sounds like Frontier is
trying to confuse the issue while running scared, they do have a point: Currently,
there is no service or system in general use that requires a speed of 1,000
mbps. In fact, there’s some question as to whether anyone has hardware that
could make use of such access even if it existed. And it is also true that
Frontier is offering basic service at less than half of what Google Fiber will
cost. Unfortunately, both of those contentions are rather missing the point…
First of all, consider that anyone whose broadband use is
limited to small and occasional downloads isn’t going to care about a higher
access speed in the first place, and they’re certainly not going to go to the
trouble of changing providers. But the key demographic for Google Fiber is
people who do make use of larger downloads or streaming audio/visual services,
and not only do they want the fastest access speeds possible, but they’re not
going to take kindly to being told that they are too stupid or too
technologically inept to understand how fast Internet connections work. In
fact, a lot of power users will probably change providers just because they’re
been insulted in such a tone-deaf fashion – but that isn’t even the worst of it…
While it might be true that no one could possibly make full
use of a 1,000 mbps Internet connection as of today, I won’t take any bets
about that being true for long – especially if such download speeds become
widely available. Somebody will find something to do with them, and
technology-oriented users are likely to want that capability even before they
find out what such new services can do. If technology has taught us anything in
the last three decades, it’s that the curve is rising faster than we can keep
up with it, and the technology that seemed like science fiction only a few
years ago will be available in every big-box retailer by Black Friday if not
before…
All of these things would be obvious to anyone who was
paying attention to the customer demographics involved, the development of the
Technology sector over the past few years, the rise of services like Dish
Network, Netflix and Hulu, the appearance of the “Cord-Cutter” movement, or the
increasing use of home WIFI systems. In fact, all of this should be obvious to
anyone who is actually in touch with the world around them, and not just
sitting in their Executive Suite and listening to an echo chamber of yes-people
telling them what they wanted to hear. If that is the case, I can only suggest
that Ms. Wilderotter of Frontier Communications needs to get out more…
No comments:
Post a Comment