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

No shit?

[RatBastard]

Considering that telephone calls in the UK are toll calls, this is a no brainer. Back when Compuserve was The Thing and you paid by the hour you got in, did your business and got the hell out fast. With always on access who cares if it takes three minutes or thirty? You don't HAVE to run like hell anymore as the monitary cost is no longer a fctor in how long you stay on line.

Re:Pull the other one.

[saskboy]

I think it is a double edged sword. Faster access creates more dependance, but as you say it also solves the waiting game in some situations. Less time waiting = more time for something else.
But how many people you know use that extra time for something wise?
I know I don't, I just post messages to /. instead of doing my homework now that I can get all my assignments and notes in an instant...

Uh, well, duh!?!?

[mcrbids]

When DSL service first became available in my area 3 years ago, I signed up immediately. I owned a small computer store at the time, and I figured that the time saved downloading drivers (as we had to do frequently) would more than pay for the DSL service.

I was right - it radically changed our outlook on drivers, which were, up to that point, carefully hoarded on floppies or CDs.

But what surprised me was that suddenly, streaming video and audio where completely options! Imagine, tens of millions of computers' content available for cheap to free, and available instantly!

Mp3.com is what then made me get DSL service at home. Music from anywhere and everywhere - like having the world's largest collection of indep. band CDs...

Oh, and remember Napster?

It was just a few months later that I signed up at home, and I will not ever turn back. (I sold said computer store. Now I telecommute as my line of work - I love it!)

I guess it's sorta like the Tivo - it's hardly exciting until you've lived with it for a while. Then, it becomes something you'll not want to live without!

Re:Try going without it.

[Jucius Maximus]

" I dunno about most of the world populous, but I had dialup (all the way back to the GEnie/CompuServe/Prodigy era), then cable for about 6 months as soon as it was available, then I moved to an area with no broadband available. Trust me, it was horrible. No one could call me because I took 3 hours downloading OS updates, I couldn't do much of what I used to like to do - idle on IRC, listen to streamed audio (legal matters aside), download new Linux distros, et cetera. After 2 years of this madness cable finally became available and life has been good again. It's just not good enough for a geek to have dial-up anymore - even with a dedicated phone line."

Thank you for summing that up so succinctly.

And it's worse when a family is involved. I am typing this on a home network where a 28.8k dialup is shared over 5 machines. My brother and sister are Kazaa (lite) leechers and all is terrible like you described.

The worst part is that decent broadband (satellite is not decent) or even 56K will never be available out here in the forseable future in rural Ontario, Canada because the population density is very low. And only 10 minutes away my friends living in the city are all on @Home enjoying fast cable.

*sob*