Looking for Broadband Revolution? Look Elsewhere.

The conversion of traditional telephone infrastructure into a high speed network using DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) technology was hailed as the next big wave on the Internet when it penetrated the North American markets in the mid-ninety???s. Hundreds of thousands of consumers and businesses benefited from the increase in bandwidth and enjoyed richer content, greater collaboration and more useful Internet applications. Increase in broadband services and bandwidth seemed exponential and everyone from Internet Service Providers to content creators were riding the wave. Then all of a sudden, it all stopped.

What happened to the North American Broadband Revolution?

While in places such as Japan, Korea and Germany, broadband DSL services continued to thrive, grow and expand, North American markets fell behind and in some cases became technological backwaters.

As Japanese Telecommunication Carriers continued to expand their networks and upgrade their equipment, North American ILEC???s (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers) decided to ignore their traditional infrastructure and focus on their wireless networks instead. Without any true competition, cable providers began to expand their broadband services but at a fraction of their capabilities ??? the reason? Why bother when your competition has stopped innovating.

What does all this mean for North American consumers? While Japanese and Korean consumers enjoy broadband connectivity on their DSL networks upwards of 100Mbps, most North American consumers are left gasping for bandwidth with a paltry 6 ??? 15 Mbps download and paying a significant premium for that privilege. Cable users are no better off with artificial soft caps on an otherwise capable network.

Of course, there is the promise of ???Fiber to the Home??? ??? but such a mammoth undertaking of deploying Fiber to all residences and businesses is a non-starter. The high costs of deploying such a network and the large geographic area under consideration would make such an undertaking very difficult and time consuming.

North American telecommunications companies must expand their DSL infrastructures and find innovative ways of using existing networks. If such measures are not taken and sufficient bandwidth for the next generation of content and Internet applications is not available, North America could find itself going from the inventor of the Internet to a laggard in the Information Race and end up chasing their Asian and European counterparts.