Distance is dead: long live distance!

‘Christmas is a time for families’ goes the saying, and, like many parents, I was again grateful this year that Skype made it possible for me to see and talk to my far-flung children over the festive season.  OK there was a bit of delay in speech now and then but, when a call to the other side of the world is totally free, who’s complaining about quality of service? 

In fact, being aware of the fast broadband connections in use at the far end, I had always assumed that any problems in call quality arose simply because of the limited DSL service available from BT in my home village.  However, a recent article in the US publication, Techpolicy Daily, has shed more light on this.  The article explains that even digital transmission of data requires the signal to be boosted periodically along the length of the transmission line.  Each such boost imposes a miniscule delay and, the more boosts, the greater the travel time impediment.  This cumulative deterioration in latency is independent of any delays resulting from local access speeds.  In other words: 

“Even if all users access the internet over connections offering the same speed, data will take longer to reach those located more distant from its origin”. 

Does this matter?  Perhaps not in the case of my Skype calls but, as the article goes on to explain, it could have a bearing on the uptake of centralized data repositories, such as those needed for cloud computing, particularly in physically distant and less densely-populated locations like New Zealand.  

Oops!  It’s another digital divide…