Broadband Boom → Re: It's not like it is hard.....

said by boogie74:

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said by Camelot One:

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Make it available, and people will buy it. Proof is in the sales numbers. So why is it taking so long to deploy?

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Do you really think that 7 years (2000-2007) is a "long time" for a technology to be deployed and accepted by 25% of the country??

It took over 85 years for radio to get that far. It took cell phones over 20 years to get that far. TV's weren't at that mark for roughly 25 years. I would say that 7 years is quite fast deployment.
Boogie

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I might agree with you except that I believe that there's a difference in the perception of "need". Radio, and to a lesser extent, cell phones were not initially perceived as being necessary, and in fact were perceived as being a rich person's toy. I suspect that broadband is perceived as being more necessary. Or maybe I just hang out here too much...

quote:

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I might agree with you except that I believe that there's a difference in the perception of "need". Radio, and to a lesser extent, cell phones were not initially perceived as being necessary, and in fact were perceived as being a rich person's toy. I suspect that broadband is perceived as being more necessary. Or maybe I just hang out here too much...

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I would say that you're just hanging out here too much. By far and large, there is a HUGE segment of the population that not only sees broadband, but COMPUTERS IN GENERAL as a "rich person's toy."

I don't see people going out to buy Lear Jets either- and THEY'VE been around for decades. Is it because Lear doesn't want to deploy 10 seat corporate jets at a reasonable price for all to enjoy? I say, no- it's because making a cheaper product that won't sell to the masses just isn't profitable.

Boogie

said by boogie74:

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By far and large, there is a HUGE segment of the population that not only sees broadband, but COMPUTERS IN GENERAL as a "rich person's toy."

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I disagree. This was true just a few years ago, but "by and large" the current thinking is that computers are here to stay, and a required tool for most people.

Now the notion that we need to upgrade all broadband from 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps...that is another story. Most people just don't care, as long as they don't have to wait for webpages to load. (I said most, and as surprising as it may sound, BBR does not make up most of the population.)

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I disagree. This was true just a few years ago, but "by and large" the current thinking is that computers are here to stay, and a required tool for most people

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Let me rephrase things... About 65% of the population has a home computer of one sort or another- and the rest know someone who does. However, a good size chunk (even 5% is a considerably large segment) of the population either cannot afford a computer or even better yet does not want one at all.

A decent chunk of those with computers can't figure out how to get the cup holder open- much less realize the benefits of broadband. Many with 384 Kbps service consider it "lightning fast" while most on BBR consider anything less than 10 Mbps up and down with 25 static IP's to be "wannabe broadband"

Boogie