US broadband still trails Asian pacesetters
After years being closer to the information hard shoulder than the superhighway, life in the United States is being steadily changed by the web and fast broadband Internet connections are speeding the way.
But the land that gave us Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Apple has a secret. The world’s lone superpower doesn’t even make a top 10 list of the world’s most wired broadband states, trailing giants like Japan and South Korea, and even tiny Denmark.
Always on, always fast, web hook-ups are not only changing how Americans use computers, but setting new trends for work, shopping and leisure time, according to new surveys.
Instead of having a mission in mind when they reach for the keyboard, more people see the Internet as a venue for fun and entertainment. Forty million Americans surfed with no specific purpose on a typical day during December according to a study released last week by the Pew Internet and American Life Project up from 25 million people the previous time the topic was studied in November 2004.
That growth was fuelled by widening broadband penetration, home wireless networks, and web ready cellphones or hand held computers which take the pain out of surfing and dispense with sluggish dial-up connections.
Anyone with a few minutes to spare, perhaps at work, or while waiting for a bus with their BlackBerry handheld perhaps, can get online to kill time. "Instead of tapping your toes or drumming your fingers, you can go to the Internet," said Deborah Fallows, a senior Pew researcher. New lifestyle trends sparked by high speed hook-ups were also revealed by another recent survey, by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.
For the first time, a broadband connection is the most popular way for US Internet users to go online at 48 percent, compared to 45 percent to dial up, said the data published in December. Whereas dial-up consumers typically got online only twice or thrice a day for around 30 minutes, those with broadband links were always dropping in.
That kind of two-minute fix, dubbed an Internet "snack" by the Pew team, is often carried on at work as well as in the home. And broadband’s speedy partner the home wireless network helps people surf the web while doing things which traditionally occupied their free time like watching television. In one offbeat finding, the USC team even concluded that half of Americans with wireless networks or wi-fi had logged on in the bathroom.
No business like web business
But the Internet is not just a trendy new way to waste time. It is changing what it means to be a customer and a service provider. While city dwellers can usually pick a broadband hook-up, tens of millions of rural Americans are out in the cold. William Graham, mayor of Scottsburg, Indiana, travelled to Washington recently to spread the gospel of municipal, wireless broadband Internet access, which he credits with saving his remote heartland town.
He transfixed what would otherwise have been just another dreary dull policy forum in the US capital, relating the moment he realised it was high speed Internet or die for his city. "’Mayor, I have got to tell you a story,’" Graham quoted a local Chrysler dealer as saying. "’Our mechanics don’t have a service manual anymore, they’ve got a laptop that sits on the air breather or fender of a car, and that laptop connects directly to Chrysler.’"
"I thought, what’s this sucker leading up to?" Graham said. "And finally he said ‘Chrysler tells us that if we can’t get high-speed secure, reliable, Internet service in Scottsburg, Indiana, we have to move the dealership’. That’s 60 jobs. Sixty jobs in a community of 6,000 is a lot of jobs." Multi-million dollar cable companies had declined to provide broadband to Scottsburg, saying costs would far outweigh profits.
One firm quoted the figure of five to six million dollars just to lay a fibreoptic cable around town. So in a pioneering effort, Graham set up a municipal wireless Internet service hooking up the whole town, for just 275,000 dollars. Now, instead of businesses deserting the small town, it has become a magnet for firms that need high speed to survive.
US no broadband Superpower
Though high-speed brings the Internet high life to many Americans, new data obscures a surprising fact the world’s lone superpower, dominant economic player which nursed the early Internet, is lagging in the web revolution. As far as "broadband penetration" is concerned, the United States trails South Korea and Japan. The United States ranks 12th in the world in broadband coverage, also behind the Netherlands, Denmark and even its vast northern neighbor, Canada.
Only 10.5 % of Americans were always connected to the Internet compared to 25 % of South Koreans, according to figures by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Some analysts say the Bush administration has failed to put the might of government behind spreading high speed Internet, and slam cable providers for charging too much and keeping the market too closed to competition.
In a provocative article in Foreign Affairs last year, former US foreign service officer Thomas Bleha warned the US economy would pay a heavy price. "By outdoing the United States, Japan and its neighbors are positioning themselves to be the first states to reap the benefits of broadband era: economic growth, increased productivity, and a better quality of life." But not everyone in the industry agrees, and a philosophical argument has been raging on the status of broadband in the United States for years.
In a December 2003 report entitled "Does the Broadband Market Need Fixing", the Congressional Budget Office, which provides non-partisan advice to legislators, doubted the utility of government action. "Nothing in the performance of the residential broadband market suggests that federal subsidies for it will produce large economic gains," the report said.
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