Of broadband cats and pigeons

My goodness, what a flurry of feathers.… The Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) set out to conduct a perfectly sensible exercise, looking at the key statistical determinants of bandwidth requirement and how these determinants might change over the next ten years. Quite properly, they described this as “a model for forecasting bandwidth demand” but that choice of words may have been responsible for the subsequent furore and howls of protest when the ‘average demand’ turned out to be surprisingly low (19 Mbps).  For example, the FT reported that:

“A key government advisory group will raise questions over whether most homes in the UK are likely to need superfast broadband in 10 years’ time”.

Similarly, Sean Royce of Kingston Communications (KC) is reported as describing the BSG result as a 'red herring' that the Government might use as a ‘yard stick’ to help lower the bar for its own superfast broadband targets. 

The BSG has rightly defended its statistical results, and neither of the above policy claims would be justified, but I’m bound to agree with a further aspect of the criticism from Sean Royce, i.e.

“The second concern I have with the study is need versus desire. From our experience, there is a clear distinction between the broadband capacity that households need and the speed levels that consumers want. This isn’t simply about keeping up with the Jones’. It’s a recognition that…we [already] rely on the internet. That reliance is only going to increase and people will continue to want faster and faster broadband speeds for peace of mind.” 

Anyone in any doubt about the importance of broadband ‘aspiration’ need only consider the eruption in US demand for Gigabit capacity – probably sparked off by the pioneering deployment of Google fibre networks.  There is no shortage of editorial advice that ‘nobody needs gigabit capacity (yet!)’ but that hasn’t stopped the emergence of so-called gigabit envy.  The latest metropolitan examples are in Los Angeles and Las Vegas but there are now dozens of US cities planning Gigabit networks.  And the rhetoric isn’t confined to city mayors: earlier this year,

Julius Genachowski, then Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, wrote an article entitled, ‘Why the U.S. Needs Gigabit Communities’.  It argued:

“We’re in a global bandwidth race, and we need to ensure the U.S. has a strategic bandwidth advantage. Without it, we risk losing our global lead on innovation, and we risk watching jobs and investment flow elsewhere….”

So much for the determinants of demand…