The computer industry can be a funny place. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you have the most talent, or the best technology — just so long as you've got the best buzzword.
A few years ago, eager multimedia entrepreneurs needed only mention the magic password, "CD-ROM," to open the gates to the Promised Land of Venture Capital. Later, when investors became disillusioned with the idea that a 5" aluminum disc would change the world, "Internet" became the fledgling software start-up's new meal ticket.
Today, the hot buzzword of the moment seems to be "broadband." You can tell by the way fund managers' eyes light up when they hear it. But what exactly is broadband, anyway? And is it all that it's cracked up to be, or is it just another stone in a road seemingly paved with endless techno-jargon?
First, we should define our terms. The word broadband itself comes from the arcane lexicon of data communication engineering. If you want the gory details, you might be interested to know that the trick to broadband communications is using Frequency Division Multiplexing technology to transmit many channels of information over a single medium (typically, a wire of some kind).
If this is a little more than you ever cared to know, we could opt instead to take the easier road. Borrowing a page from the Devil's Dictionary of Computing — the same book that has "anything you can see in a Web browser" listed as its definition of the Internet — let's call "any means of getting onto the Internet that's faster than a modem and connected all the time" a broadband connection.
By this definition, broadband network connectivity is nothing new. Leased lines, T-1s, and Frame Relay connections have been bringing the Internet to universities and corporations for years, at speeds many times higher than even today's modem technology would allow.
The problem is that all these types of access typically cost thousands of dollars per month. While the average Web surfer can make use of them at the office or at school, the high-speed connectivity ends at quitting time, or once they graduate.
For a time, it was thought that ISDN technology would bridge the gap between institutional leased lines and the lowly analog modems used by private individuals. But while ISDN was fairly successful in Europe, Pacific Bell and the other American local telephone carriers have been widely criticized for failing to effectively roll out the technology. In the United States, ISDN remains overpriced and beyond the reach of most users.
Enter today's new generation of low-cost broadband services. Following deregulation of the cable television and telephone industries, these utilities have been locked in a neck-and-neck race to be the first to deliver high speed Internet access to their subscribers, over existing wires and circuits.
Making this possible are a number of newly developed technologies, including cable modems and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL). Still other advances are only just now beginning to appear, such as high speed wireless networking utilizing small dish antennae like those used for digital satellite television.
The common theme with all these new services is that they are available at low cost. In many areas, a cable modem connection costs about $40 a month. A DSL line offering comparable connection speeds might cost several times more — but still only a fraction of the $1000 or more per month that a traditional T-1 line might run you.
Because of this, for the first time the average home user can achieve network connectivity at speeds comparable to those once reserved for institutional leased lines. It's no use having access to up-to-the-minute information on the Web if it takes you an hour to download it with your modem. Broadband services are a big step toward fulfilling the promise of the Internet by making these high speeds possible.
For content providers, this speed increase means the ability to deliver users a more exciting online experience than the standard, static Web page. This "rich media" experience might include full-motion video, live audio, and custom programs and applets that would be infeasible to deliver to slow analog modem users.
Another important facet of broadband services is that as they become more widely available, many more end-users will have an Internet connection that's available 24 hours a day. This differs from the experience of most Net users so far, for whom connecting to the Internet has been an active exercise.
Okay, so all this "activity" doesn't seem to be doing much for those overweight systems geek types you see at trade shows — but that's not what I'm talking about. Dialing out requires that you do something. You need to go out and check your email. By contrast, always-on broadband services mean your email is delivered to you.
This distinction is often overlooked in favor of drooling visions of blazing fast download speeds, but it's an important one. A network connection that's always available represents a tremendous shift in the way we involve the Internet in our lives.
It makes the Net more ubiquitous, a part of the home in the same way as other appliances like television and the telephone. In turn, this opens the door to a host of other applications, from overnight file transfers to the network-connected refrigerator that automatically orders milk from the online grocery store when you run out.
That's the dream, anyway. Whether it becomes a reality depends not so much on the technology — which is already in place and spreading to more and more markets across the country — but on the content providers. Broadband is likely to be coming to your area, sooner or later, if it hasn't already. But what will you be doing with it?
Since the early days of the Internet explosion, multimedia developers have sought for a way to reach the Holy Grail of network content — Internet television. Like the video phones of 1950s pulp science fiction, however, it has yet to come to fruition.
But even if it became a reality today, are 57 Internet Explorer channels of multimedia advertising really the best we can hope for broadband technologies?
The real answer to the question of whether broadband Internet access will deliver on its hype lies not in the technologies, but in the vision of the people who seek to make use of them. So far, the bulk of the ideas have been limited to network enabled parallels of existing technologies: Internet television, Internet telephones, Internet radio, and so on.
Even if increased network bandwidth made it possible to deliver these, the user's response is predictable: "I already have a radio, thankyouverymuch, and it's got better speakers than my PC."
Here lies the root of consumer skepticism over broadband Internet technologies. What's their real value? Does a broadband version of an online service really offer any additional benefit, or just more bloat to make use of all this "excess" speed?
Does the ability to download huge streams of data really enable great new things for online users? Or does it only make ideas feasible that were probably never that great, back when a modem-only world made them impossible?
What's needed are new ideas and new directions, not new buzzwords. The Internet has the potential to improve so many aspects of our lives, potential that has remained largely untapped in favor of mimicking what's already been done.
Making high speed, always-on Internet access available to the home user is a great positive step. But as to whether broadband access will prove to be the revolution it's been touted to be — the verdict's still out.
