Technology / Engineering
The nearly 100 members of Broadband for America run the gamut from major backbone providers to mid-sized ISPs to application and content providers to representatives of users. An improvement in technology and engineering at any step has a positive impact for the constituents of every member.
Every advance leading to greater bandwidth and higher speeds opens a door to new applications. Many new applications uncover a need for greater bandwith and higher speeds. It is useful to remember that while the “internet” is 40 years old, the ubiquity of a simple application like e-mail has existed for just over a decade. When the Betamax v VHS format battle was raging, it was inconceivable to most users that a day would come when a full-length movie could be downloaded (a word which would have brought a blank look in the mid-80’s) in a matter of minutes.
The ability to download streaming media brings with it the requirement for more a more robust internet, with faster switches, more sophisticated data handling so that every pixel of every frame of “The Office” comes to your computer screen in the right order, in hi-def video and crisp stereo sound.
Broadband allows us to do low-tech things in a high-tech way. Anyone who has ever renewed their driver’s license or their automobile tags using a broadband connection to the DMV knows the efficiencies which that technology has generated. There are 250 million cars and light trucks in the United States. If every license plate renewal done over broadband took five minutes instead of two hours the net benefit to the American public is enormous – nearly 20 million person-days saved!
The advances in speed from the days of the 300 baud dial-up modems in the 1980’s to the billion bits-per-second optical modems of today have led to the ability to do things which were simply impossible prior to broadband. For example consider a doctor sitting at his desk in Minnesota getting high-resolution diagnostic images of a child’s brain sent in real time from India or Malaysia. That would have not been possible – even if it were conceivable – prior to the advent of broadband.
