Superfast Broadband Speeds Beneficial but Need Purpose, Gig Proponents Say

Fast broadband networks may shift the paradigm for some communities but still come with many questions, panelists said Tuesday at a Broadband Breakfast Club discussion in Washington. They said advanced, gigabit-speed networks may be and already are changing the economics of the Kansas City area, where Google is building its fiber network, and Chattanooga, Tenn., where a municipal electric utility has offered gigabit speeds for years. But panelists debated what applications these speeds may serve, considerations beyond speed to watch for, and the virtues of symmetrical speed.

But demands have gone up, said Kevin McElearney, Comcast senior vice president-network engineering and technical operations. “What I've seen over the years is just an explosion of growth.” Comcast has kept ahead of demand every year, raising speeds 11 times in 11 years, he said. He described a time when megabit-to-the-home speed was considered “just amazing.” High-definition video in particular is driving demand for higher bandwidth, said McElearney.

The effect of fast speeds is already apparent in Kansas City, Chattanooga and elsewhere, panelists said. Gigtank is an organization hoping to attract entrepreneurs and research and development projects to Chattanooga, said founder and co-director Sheldon Grizzle: “We need to start that now.” Some of the project members receive stipends, free housing and access to the fast speeds, as part of the community’s “living lab,” but normally Chattanooga’s EBP utility charges users more than $300 per month for speeds that fast. “Clearly there’s not a lot of people taking them up on that right now.” Chattanooga is still in “infancy stages,” he said. Google Fiber’s Kansas City development provided “a real innovation on the low end of broadband” with its offer of several years of free slower Internet for customers who pay just installation costs, Wallsten said. Google Fiber may help the tech company test its products with the larger bandwidth, said IHS researchers in a Monday report (http://bit.ly/18fwWI0). It said Google will be a “minor player” in the U.S. broadband market due to the limited rollout of its fiber to a handful of communities. “This isn’t a one-time capital investment,” McElearney said of such fast networks.

Consultant David Sandel called the speeds “transformative” in a way that calls for new education, enables new types of social sharing and pressures organizations to break out of siloed structures. In St. Louis, the Loop Media Hub is a “gigabit version of an American Main Street,” with fast speeds along two miles that have now attracted many creative and innovative groups, Sandel added. He described economic impacts of various sorts that follow, from real estate values rising to new businesses opening. “Speed enables cloud servers in a big, big way,” he said.

The search is for the right applications, panelists said. Gigtank has become “less blue sky” and more focused on practical results of the next two to three years, Grizzle said, saying one focus has been the Internet of Things. McElearney acknowledged the significance of the Internet of Things and encouraged better attention to IPv6 from providers. US Ignite hunts for apps that “can take advantage of the networks” and tries to “foster a community of gigabit thinkers,” said Executive Director William Wallace. Low-latency video conferencing will be important, with effects in education and healthcare, he said. Grizzle referred to a case where scientists are able to upload massive data sets. He and Wallace praised the symmetry of speeds as a catalyst for these developments and innovations. Speed caps will and should be “removed in a practical sense,” Sandel said, urging the audience to view broadband as a utility, like gas, water or electricity. Those services are offered through a “standard interface” to “whatever capacity” people may need as long as they pay for it, he said: “It isn’t about ‘how much.’ It’s about ‘I'm free to do whatever I want.'”

Anchor institutions can play a role, Grizzle said. Chattanooga made a “conscious decision” to integrate its fast speeds with the library system and included a library floor for creating content, equipped with a 3-D printing capability, video studio space and the Adobe Creative Suite, he said. The speeds may support the trend toward massive open online courses, Wallace added.