comments? Does faster broadband really matter?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: December 27, 2005 11:28:55 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Does faster broadband really matter?
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com

Does faster broadband really matter?
12/26/2005 5:17:49 PM, by Jeremy Reimer

<http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051226-5846.html>

Internet blogger Om Malik has written an interesting piece on the  
new, faster broadband connections that are now becoming available to  
US consumers. His premise is that the faster speeds are not that  
important, because they don't translate into a significantly better  
experience for the end user.

The gist of his argument is that most online activities, like  
standard websurfing, are not significantly sped up by high-bandwidth  
connections, and the few that are, such as downloading, are not  
typically time-sensitive anyway:

Websurfing runs at only about a megabit per second, and nearly  
everything else except downloading is effectively throttled down at  
the source. Downloading turns out to have some natural limits as  
well; at 100 Mbps, you can download enough music for 24 hours of  
listening in only four minutes per day. The practical result,  
confirmed by high speed leaders like Masayoshi Son of Yahoo BB in  
Japan, is that the faster speeds yield only a extremely modest  
increase in real traffic demand.

[snip]

Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>



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