Slashdot Mirror
Broadband's Unintended Consequences
Makarand writes "BBC News is
reporting on the result of a long term study
conducted to find how ordinary people and small businesses in and around London and Leeds used broadband. They
found
that broadband was actually slowing down user interaction with
the Net as they are no longer afraid of spending
too much time online anymore. People did not really care about the speed at which they could download from the Net. Broadband's
selling points- like speed and the capacity to be always-on, were something
that the average person did not care about."
It's not aboot caring aboot speed, it's aboot worring about being hit by per minute fees while online. Those that switched to broadband from dial-up didn't care before or after aboot the speed. As the summary and article say, users are taking their time interacting with the web as they don't have to rush to get on, do what they want to do, and then get off. Yes, if it's pr0n they want, they may be rushing to get off indeed.
This whole study is based on the context of users who pay by the minute for phone calls, and who pay for local calls. If you live in a place where you don't pay by the minute for local calls (like most of the world) the study is completely irrelevant.
In other words, who cares?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Just to give his comment some context, there's been a series of TV ads recently in the UK (where the survey was done), for which the tagline was "it does exactly what it says on the tin". I presume that's what Mr Crabtree's comment refers to.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
I never feel rushed using my 56k dial-up. It's always on mostly, persist enabled. When it goes down its down for 60 secs and then its back up. I've downloaded several ISOs using dialup over the years. no big deal. I can see where time is an issue for those folks that live in countries with whack rate plans just for local calls but in the states its no biggee to be online all day even when I'm not there.
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I'm downloading at 6.5k/sec. I hate it when ISPs say speeds up to 768k
Thats 6.5KBps over a 768kbps line, so in reality, you're downloading at about 65kbps, and the max you could hit will probably be 76.8-80KBps.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
Actually, unmetered dial-up packages have been available in the UK for a couple of years now. A typical unlimited dial-up plan with an ISP will set you back £13-£15 a month, with no additional phone charges. An ADSL or cable modem connection costs about £20-£30 a month (prices have falen in the last few months because BT Wholesale - who essentially have a monopoly on the sale of ADSL to ISPs - significantly reduced the price they charge ISPs for each ADSL connection). So just going by monthly costs, dial-up is still quite a bit cheaper.
--Dave
Unfortunately, I have broadband and I do care about the speed I get. Only because I'm downloading at 6.5k/sec. I hate it when ISPs say speeds up to 768k so they're still okay when you're downloading slower than a 56k modem.
Just because you can't download fast doesn't mean you don't have the bandwidth. My bandwidth is capped at 2.5 megabits per second, yet I rarely see this. For example, I find a good measure of download speed is grabbing an ISO for FreeBSD or the Linux distro of the month from some overloaded FTP server. Of course, if a server's bandwidth is maxed out and can only give 6.5 KB/sec, it doesn't matter what your bandwidth is.
When they say you have a certain bandwidth, that is the maximum. A lot of factors (load on the local router, ISP's upstream line, local trunk's capacity or utilization, etc) impact your actual speed. That's why I ask around and don't go by the numbers.
The other advantage is you won't get a disconnect when 98% done downloading that 650 MB Linux ISO. And your ping will be faster in Quake, since there is no D/A A/D conversion going on. I'll take a 6.5 KB pure digital download over a 6.5 KB analog modem download any day.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
In the UK, users of dialup services are charged on a per minute basis, even for local calls (such as those to an ISP). Clearly, it's flat rate pricing that was the big selling point. Consequently, the study's conclusions are of little relevance to the US market.
When they get to broadband those things arent a problem but look at the reason given by them as to what they like and its a product of speed and connectivity.
An academic researcher asks someone why they chose something(A) and what they like about the thing(B)and if A/=B suggest that it would be better to push B as the reason to swap. The point is that B is often a totally unknown thing to people choosing. They have no concept of B before they get there.
To a person on a crappy dialup connection who pays by the minute while they download complicated web pages that take for bloody ever to get there or flash animations that do nothing except say press here to enter the idea of not being concerned about wasting time online is an alien concept.
Its like heaven. Everybody wants to go there but noone wants to die. but equally no-one comes back because they don't like it.
Most ISP accounts in the UK offer free calls these days - gone are the days of pey-per-minute calls for the 'net - and as a result, people have no more reason to rush when on dialup than they do on broadband.
But they do, for two reasons.
1) Staying online on dialup services for long periods of time is discouraged, as it ties up a 64k circuit in the local exchange and a modem at the ISP's modem bank. Indeed, BTinternet's 'unmetered' service limits you to 150 hours per month. Then again, BTinternet is crap.
2) Staying online with dialup ties up your phone line. Staying online with broadband doesn't.
I would assume that both of these apply in Canada as much as they do in Britain.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Hello all. Sorry some people on the thread seem to think the bbc story, and by association our research, is dumb. It isn't meant that way. A few points of defence. Firstly, we didn't ask the beeb to run the story, neither did they talk to us, neither did they actually ask me about those quotes. Second, the point in the BBC story which is most innacurate is the paragraph which reads "They found that people did not really care about the speed at which ADSL and cable allowed them to download websites and files. Instead broadband was actually slowing down surfer's interaction with the net." This isn't what we said. We said that speed, as a selling point which made people appreciate and want broadband a lot, was contingent on activities involving heavy data use, or things requiring fast response (like ping rates for gaming). If all you do is send e-mail and surf a little - which if you look at the data this is what most home internet users do, give or take - then a massively fast connections is nicer than dial-up (of course it is), but doesn't actually make for a revolution in internet use. Counterintuitively, a lot of broadband users told us that what they really liked avout it was not having to worry about time, rather than speed. We are talknig about mothers with kids or small business owners here, rather than the type of people who read slashdot. Hence, broadband is not always about speed, but can be about taking it easy. Hence those people who sell broadband as about speed might find that regular users - as opposed to slashdot people - don't buy it. Just in case anyone didn't notice, we also said that broadband wasn't about being always on too.... read the presentation here http://www.theisociety.net/archives/000219.html#00 0219
the research itself will come out in the spring. If anyone wants to come in for a coffee and give us some pointers, drop me a line jcrabtree {at} theworkfoundation dot com
Actually, unmetered narrowband has been around over here in the UK for several years, the only exception being the mobile market. It's the broadband side that is proving more problematic...
-MT.