[1st-mile-nm] Broadband op-ed in today's Albuquerque Journal

[Andrew cohill]

We've begun to talk about "little" broadband and "big" broadband to address this very issue.  We use the term "little broadband" to talk about DSL, cable modem, WiFi, and satellite, and "big broadband" to talk about fiber networks delivering 100 megabit or Gigabit connections.  

We have found this to be very effective, as ordinary people immediately understand that they don't want to be stuck with "little" broadband.

One of the other language issues we run into is that "broadband" and "Internet" are used synonymously, and this causes great confusion.

Broadband, properly used, refers to the basic transport network, which can carry many services.  Internet access is just one of dozens or even hundreds of services that can be delivered over a high performance broadband network.  People and businesses want more than "high speed Internet."  They want phone and TV services, they want business class services like videoconferencing, data backup services, medical and telehealth services, security services, movies on demand, and much more.

Broadband is the highway.  Internet access is just one of the trucks using the highway. 

Andrew


On Jul 15, 2010, at 4:25 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:

> The problem with essays/editorials like this is that they rarely define "broadband."  For too long now, the FCC said it was 250kbytes (NB make sure one specifies BITES or BYTES) up and down.  In fact, we need to join much of the so-called developing world like Japan and South Korea and set our initial target a 1gigabytes up and down .

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