There was yet another article recently on the topic of why we all need faster broadband – this time on the GigaOM site. What’s funny is that the same arguments have been made for faster broadband ever since the days of dial-up, and they really haven’t moved on that much. In brief, here are the three reasons the author thinks government should invest in broadband:
Educational Access
Today the New York Times ran an article about the rising costs of a college education and offered up the idea of distance learning as being one solution to rising costs. I don’t think distance learning can substitute for the entire college experience, but having participated in several distance learning classes, it can be used in conjunction with meetings online or weekly in-person meetings to create a rich learning and discussion environment. Broadband makes that possible today, and faster speeds will only add to the interactivity of those online environments — making a college education more accessible. The kids who most benefit from this are not living in FiOS areas; they are in poorer areas where ISPs try to avoid or delay launching high speed services. I know, I live in one of those areas. The government needs to step up to improve this access divide.
Medical Care Improvements
Broadband also can save on medical costs and improve access to health care. A release issued todayhighlighted radiologists’ frustration with quality of care. Ninety-four percent of radiologists surveyed blamed missed or delayed diagnosis on the inability of medical imaging systems to communicate with information systems of physicians and hospitals. Delivering radiological scans via broadband requires fat pipes and rapid speeds, but the benefit to patients, insurers and doctors would be many: fewer scans, faster delivery of images where they are needed, and lower costs associated with the process.
Telecommuting Expansion
Another benefit of better broadband would be the ability for people to telecommute. This has far-reaching benefits, from fewer cars on the roads to increasing a family’s resilience in the face of economic uncertainty. As a telecommuter, when I change jobs I don’t have to sell my house, uproot my husband’s career or leave the network of friends and family who support us. The more people who have that flexibility, the less traumatizing job loss can be both for the individual family and for a particular region.
Education, telemedicine, and telecommuting are all arguments that have been used from the beginning. So is the issue really insufficient speed at this point? No – it isn’t. Cultural issues are a much bigger barrier to these things than Internet speeds are.
The reason we don’t have more telecommuting? Because many companies still don’t believe in it, or provide it as an opportunity for their employees. The vast majority of employees of the vast majority of companies have plenty bandwidth available at home – 3Mbit/s or more – for $50 a month or so, which would be plenty to do most desk-based jobs – certainly enough for IP telephony and remote access to enterprise applications. Unless you’re working in media or other fields where you need to move around huge files, bandwidth just isn’t an issue.
The reason we don’t have telemedicine? We do, only it’s restricted to a few areas where it really makes sense. Most patients – and most doctors – still prefer the face to face approach that has worked for thousands of years, and rightly so. Unless we all have full-immersion virtual reality suites in our homes telemedicine is always going to be fairly basic. But it has a role in very remote areas such as the Australian outback, where doctors are able to connect with distant medical facilities as needed to provide specialist advice.
The reason we don’t have remote learning in education? Again, we already do, and it’s expanding rapidly. It doesn’t require that much bandwidth to deliver video content, to allow for voice or other interaction between students and teachers, or to do many of the other things that are required to allow education to thrive. Again, a standard broadband connection available to the vast majority of the population is sufficient.
Sure, we should be aiming for faster speeds over time to allow things like delivery of HD video and faster transfer of large files and so on, but these are really incremental improvements at this point, and none of them are required to make the three things listed by the GigaOM author possible. Rather, cultural changes and an awareness of the benefits and possibilities associated with broadband will make the biggest difference. But let’s not make this yet another area where the government gets involved in a way which prejudices the way the market develops.
