Consumers Suffering from Complexity
Randall Stross of the New York Times writes about the sad shape of Internet service in American homes. Little did I know that consumers in other countries have it so much better:
Until we get an upgrade - or rather an upgrade to an upgrade - the only Americans who will enjoy truly fast and inexpensive service will be those who leave the country. In California, Comcast cable broadband provides top download speeds of 6 megabits a second for a little more than $50 a month. That falls well short, however, of Verizon’s 15-megabit fiber-based service offered on the East Coast at about the same price. But what about the 100-megabit service in Japan for $25 month? And better, much better: Stockholm’s one-gigabit service - that is, 1,000 megabits, or more than 1,300 times faster than Verizon’s entry-level DSL service - for less than 100 euros, or $120, a month.
One-gigabit service is not in the offing in the United States. What the network carriers seem most determined to sell is a premium form of Internet service that offers a tantalizing prospect of faster, more reliable delivery - but only if providers like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft pay a new charge for special delivery of their content. (That charge, by the way, would be in addition to the regular bandwidth-based Internet connection charges that their carriers already levy.)
Like so much of what takes place online - like the cybersecurity concerns dealt with by my client CSIA - Stross writes of an issue that American Internet consumers (more than 3/4ths of the American public, according to my last poll) deal with every day yet have no idea that things could be better. We would watch many more videos on our computers, I’m sure, if we didn’t have to wait for the video to download and even then get rewarded for our patience with a video both choppy and small. Instead, we just accept that this is our lot in life.
But, as Stross points out, this is not our lot in life. Consumers in Sweden aren’t putting up with this. Why should we? Why is the American public not calling their elected representatives and demanding better? Some of the answer is conspiracy - broadband carriers have an interest in keeping consumers in the dark - but most of the answer is complexity. Whether it’s the width of the pipeline or the dangers of data breach, the issues seem too technical and too far removed to engage the interest of Americans, let alone spur them to action. But the simple fact is that these and many other connectedness-type issues do or will impact the lives of Americans every day in significant ways. Many benefits will accrue to the leader - whether a candidate for political office or a non-profit looking for funding - that figures out how to explain both the problems and the benefits of connectedness in plain English.
Once Americans understand, they will care.
