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."

Comments

Re:Pull the other one.

[vicviper]

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.

The Accused Replies

[crabbers]

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