How Broadband Changed The World

Let’s go back in a time capsule – back to 1993. Imagine if in 1993 if someone told you that world of communications was about to undergo a revolution so striking that it would change the nature of humanity forever. Imagine if they told you that within twenty years nearly every person on earth would have instant access to an ocean of human knowledge including audio, video and text that dwarf the size of any library. Imagine if they told you that people would be able to publish instantly to the entire world population, and that people would speak to each other with audio and video communications without concern of long distance charges. Imagine if they told you that you telephone companies would soon be optional, and that your cable company, satellite company and phone company would morph into competitors doing the same jobs with different technologies?

If we go back to 1993, the future seems quite unrealistic, and the primary reason is because of the inconceivable nature of the broadband revolution.

The Internet and the rise of the World Wide Web created a new means of communication with digital data that far surpassed any publishing medium the world had ever seen. And with the advance of that medium, a race has been underway to equip people all over the world with their lifeline to the rest of the human species: a broadband connection.

The convergence of audio and video and text data into a single medium over an IP connection radically transforms the nature of human communications. Huge amounts of data can transport from any person on the earth to any other relatively cheaply. While humans still have individuality, their connection to their species has been elevated to an entirely new potential. It is a potential that is too awe inspiring to fully appreciate.

While IP voice services to the home are still relatively new and in an early adopter phase, the benefits of VoIP are overwhelming. The old model of expensive long distance calls goes out the window. The problem of not having enough phone lines in a house is gone. And new capabilities are added, such as videoconferencing.

It may still be a while before TV signals are sent to the home compressed over a broadband connection. But it isn’t unrealistic to expect killer new applications to emerge here – applications such as interactive television where audience members can participate and for private discussions with one another. As killer applications of interactive television, and the gaming worlds collide, the demand for higher and higher speed broadband access will accelerate.

How fast broadband connections to the home will eventually be is debated, but to people who follow trends, it isn’t inconceivable that homes will have gigabit connections in the near future. Consider how fast cable television took off, even in an era where other mediums existed for television access. Competing with existing television towers and satellites, cable television was able to lay an infrastructure of coax throughout America in a couple decades. Imagine how fast fiber could be run to households in an era of interactive television, with shopping and entertainment dollars demand higher speed access. Fasten your seatbelts, because standardization on TCP/IP and the coming broadband wars that are in their infancy is the most significant development in communications history.