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U.S. Internet Growth Stalling
abb_road writes "Internet usage is predicted to grow by only 1% in 2006, with uptake slowing even more in subsequent years. The article examines causes for the slowdown, including individuals who are actively choosing to not be online. These non-users cite a number of reasons for their decision, including cost and increased productivity. Is this simply a combination of luddites and a statistical quirk, or is the Internet reaching its saturation point in the U.S.?"
From the article, "Goodwin knows how easy it is for Big Brother to gain access to personal information." This one reason for not using the Internet is a perfect example of pure ignorance in regards to privacy. I bet this person has no problem handing a credit card to the waitress, gas station attendant, or retail clerk. How do these oh so careful people combat a waitress, gas station attendant, or retail clear from making note of the credit card number, three digit security code on the back, and expiration date and then selling it to a friend or using it themselves?
there's only so much porn you can watch....
I'm sure spam, phishing scams, and annoying ads also play a role in the barrier for growth.
There's also my personal reason (for not getting online AS MUCH anyway) -- I sit at a computer
all day at work, why would I want to do more of that in my spare time?
Nothing to see here. Please move along.
Just a question is it not 2006 now or did I miss something?
I find it is eating into my TV time.
Or is it still possible to live without using the Internet? I would certainly think so. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any turning back for me (or any other Slashdotter, for that matter). I can only change my Internet usage habits, but I can't stop using it.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
This is gonna get easier from now on!
The fear that some moron is going to drag you to court because the foto you took shows a show in the background and he owns the copyright to it?
Or that you might accidently write something that someone already published in a similar format and he sues you for a billion?
With copyright out of hand, I wouldn't dare writing anything on a webpage that someone might have said before. At least not on a webpage that I'm liable for.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What is the growth rate of broadband availability?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Maybe almost everybody in the US who could be interested in having an access to the net does have it already, so is logic to think that the percentage of internet users in the US will rise with the time, but slower every year.
--
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From all the people like us not reading /. while at work.
Its like after opening day in baseball when a third of the players in the league are projected to bat .500 with 162 homeruns and 400+ RBIs.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
...I know people who still use ISDN, and others who don't have phones, and some don't even have plasma screens.
My usage has dropped drastically in the last few years, primarily due to the commercialization, ads, scams, pop-overs, etc. I realize that these people need to make money too, but in general, it just seems things have been commercialized to the point of irritation.
There's still lots of interesting stuff out here, it's just getting less worthwhile to look for it.
We've seen all the pr0n there is available and it is us.
"...simply a combination of luddites..."
Oh yes! If you don't want the wonderful, magical internet you MUST be a luddite.
I've made a conscious decision to abstain from Internet usage. Don't have it, don't need it, don't want it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
"Is this simply a combination of luddites and a statistical quirk, or is the Internet reaching its saturation point in the U.S.?"
Maybe it's reached its saturation point because of those "luddites"? There are plenty of people who live as comfortably as they wish without the Internet and have no desire to get it, and those people aren't going to die out for a few decades. Spend some time in Oklahoma or Arkansas.
I kinda wonder why this is supposed to matter. Anyone (with VERY few exceptions) who wants Internet access can get it, either at home or at a library. Just because a few people don't want it doesn't mean the nation's going to fall back to the stone age. I'd concentrate on expanding broadband to more suburbian and rural areas, myself.
If it's a saturation problem I'm guesing it's because of the cost.
Unlike TV where you plop down some cash and get a new toy with no other costs (OK, cable, satellite, but those have there own saturation points too, and it's lower than the total number of people with TV's), the Internet requires yet another monthly subscription (to go along with your phone, cell phone, cable, satellite, gas, electricity, oil, water, whatever...).
When the Internet is free for everyone, then the saturation point will skyrocket. These people that say they don't want it just don't know what it is, if it were free and available they sure as hell would be using it.
Anyone who wants Internet access pretty much has it. Besides, there are so many people in this coutnry anyway.
End of discussion. Really.
When is the last time you told someone to google something (most likely to get them off your back) and they said, "Oh, I don't use that interweb thing."
I suspect that the two main reasons for any increase in the number of people using the internet in the US at this point is due to the fact that more people are being born than dying, and likely also has to do with the number of immigrants.
Coincidentally, the numbers on the CIA Factbook give me 1% when taking these things into consideration.
QED???
1984? That's a bit of a stretch. There, the government controlled all communications; I don't think any one government can control the Internet. It's spread across the globe and even repressive governments allow limited access.
Her problem is that she's bought into the media hype over the problems on the Internet. It's not like there are none, but if she's worried about her personal information, does she throw out sensitive documents (pay stubs, credit card bills, etc.) without shredding them? Perhaps she's handed her card over to a cashier, not realizing it's being double swiped. Does she carry on cell phone conversations out in public, blithely giving away personal details anyone in earshot can hear?
The problem is not the Internet, but the people on the Internet, specifically the con artists, scammers, and criminals who now have a new way of fleecing honest citizens. As long as the media contnues to blow every story out of proportion, Internet growth will die out.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
These non-users cite a number of reasons for their decision, including cost and increased productivity
I agree.
Ever since I started using the internet at work my productivity has shot through the roof. Thank you, Slashdot!
The Internet has to be worth it for those:
-Who don't want to get viruses
-Who don't want to get spam
-Who don't want to pay $50 a month for fast Internet
-Who don't want to mess with computers at all
When someone's computer gets all screwed up with viruses they often buy another computer to work around the problem. Maybe it's time to upgrade anyway, but sheesh that's a big investment just to surf the net.
The biggest thing that would get *me* off the Internet is the monthly $50 cost. Cable is the only option where I live, and Adelphia won't give us a break.
If you were going to get the internet you would have gotten it by now.
From TFA:
""If you're spending all your time on e-mail, you're not listening and reading," says Rogers, who rarely took lecture notes while he was a student so he could listen more intently. "I listen and read; e-mail is a huge distraction.""
Uh, I wonder how he thinks you are supposed to absorb email - osmosis?
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
For whatever reason, when I explain how to do something to my mother, she insists on writing it down in a notebook, step by step. If I try to explain a process with multiple paths to the solution, she tends to get confused quite easily (e.g. you can either click the print icon on the toolbar or go to file->print and select that option).
She is 59.
This is just empiricle evidence of course, but the nature of multiple paths, whether its the computer's interface or the sorting through the billions of results on Google, really seems to confuse the older generation.
In some respects, my mother seems to do better when she one definitive research source, and one path to a solution.
This would at least provide an incentive for people to sign up and start using the internet.
Then, you can show them Google, Wikipedia and Slashdot and they may never leave.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
i don't have a television.
Articles like Businessweek's only reinforce the incorrect perceptions of the ignorant. It would only take one "by the way," sentence in articles like these to help get even a tiny sliver of truth into people's minds - the Net is as safe (or unsafe) as you make it. By getting online, you are not automatically exposing yourself to any dangers you would otherwise never experience. It is what you do with your own information online that creates, or eliminates, security risk.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Bill Gates is probably personally responsible for the reticence of large numbers of potential Internet users and ex-users.
Between difficult to use features, hardware incompatibilities, non-intuitive settings and choices, then spam, virii, adware, phishing, etc, I have seen people give up on the Internet, because they simply couldn't figure out all of Gates BS.
I switched one friends wife to an iBook, and she (also a newbie) has had little problem, and it makes him a bit envious. He is reluctant to try anything new at this point, as Windows was so hard to deal with.
For the average users it is only one thing that is important: EASE OF USE.
Once new applications and uses appear, the growth in the use of the Internet will continue. We've run out of users for the current applications and uses of the Internet. The way to tap into more users is to create more and different things that can be used.
It's still costly to get a decent connection. Where I live I have a good ISP that provides quality DSL service with support (unlike ATT/SBC which has what has to be the worst customer support on the planet), but even with all of that I'm paying $60/month for my DSL. Once the long term contracts with ATT expire I'm certain that ATT will 'screw my ISP to the wall' so that I'll need to choose between a $60 ATT line with the worlds worst service, or an $85 (or higher) line from my IPS, or I can get on Comcast's 1000 household per subnet cable connections. The future looks dim.
I have friends who live paycheck to paycheck, and $720 per year for internet access is something they can do without.
Eschew Obfuscation
Would you say the same about people who do not embrace the automobile or electricity? What about those who do not wish for medical science and instead pray their disease away?
Blar.
There is some serious saturation going on. Originally, there was no internet availability, yet people who wanted it. Now, that number is a lot smaller. You can only involve so many people. I mean, what would we have to do to keep the doomsayers calm? Double the number of blogs again?
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
SBC / AT&T or whatever they call themselves today keep advertising DSL for $12.99 per month. There is no question that I would subscribe for that amount. However, my neighborhood's phone system is supplied via a fiber line, and there is no DSL equipment on our end. That means SBC / AT&T can not provide DSL to my residence.
I am currently going back to school online so my only choice is to pay $60 per month for Cable access. Once school is done I will no longer have Internet access at home. This is too much money to spend on Internet access in my opinion.
This is too bad because I use it for many things. I use it as a file server to host code examples. I use and update these code examples all the time from work. I also use it to help my father and sister with computer problems they are having by using VNC over an SSH connection. I don't want to give these up, but as I said $60 per month is simply unreasonable.
Sig free since 2/6/2002
... The fact you STILL can't get High speed access in large portions of the US. I moved around 2 mile about 2 years ago. I used to live THREE miles East of MCI/Worldcom and AOL's world headquarters and I could NOT get HSIA. This was, at the time, the fasted growing county in the US, and I could tell you for a fact that 1/2 the homes couldnt' get HSIA.
This doesn't seem to be the problems with other countries for some reason. I guess their comunications companies actually want to make money on selling internet access, too bad ours doesn't.
When you OWN the politicians, you cna jsut sit back and charge 10 times the amount for similar service in other countries and you don't have to lift a finger to increase your service area. Why do work when you can get the politicians to pass laws allowing you to do nothing to add user access and charge out the wazzoo.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
I'm going back to NNTP, FTP, and gopher.
See ya on the flip side
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
You really think that if you post something (that you wrote) on your blog that someone is going to sue you for copyright infringement? You may have valid points about copyright being "out of hand", but if you seriously think that more than, say, five people in the world cancel their internet out of fear of being sued for infringement, you need to seriously get a grip on reality.
If you are in the content creation business, different story I suppose. But getting out of a particular business does not require ceasing to use the internet at all.
It's not that surprising that the increase in the number of users is slowing down, as just about anyone that wants to in the US these days can at least get a dial-up service for almost free. Now instead of worrying about the increase in the number of users, people need to think more about the amount of time spent using the internet, as it becomes more and more a part of people's daily lives.
The "AWE and AMAZEMENT" of the internet is over in the US. The boom days of the late 90's and early 00's are also over... or more to the point... we got what we wanted (email and the web for those that wanted it). From a personal perspective, I use the internet less now than I did 2-3 years ago. I think we are starting to balance out...
The internet is like any other technology in that untimately it's installment rate must slow, and eventually stall. just as there are people in the US who do not own cel phones or have television, there will inevitably be people who will not use the internet. At the beggining of a new market, the main barrier to entry is the kinks in the technology. The people called innovators typically don't care what it costs to get ahold of a new technology because they enjoy the technology for it's own sake. These people are about 5% of the market, and sometimes less. The next set of about 20% of the market are the early adopters who buy into new technology/market because they see a new use for a product or technology. In gaming these are the people we call "hardcore" gamers. To the early adopters the main barrier to entry cost. The minute cost comes down and the kinks in the technology are worked out, allowing for easier user interface, these people jump all over the new product. After them follows the mainstream market which is the bulk of the consumers. people who are not technologically inclined, or particularly interested in anything new. these are the people who bought DVD players 5 years after the technologies release. These are also the people who started going on the net around the time AOL become "popular". To the mass market, cost and practicality are the main issues. the lower the cost, the more of the mass market you can capture, but it is here that the saturation point starts to appear. the late adopters are the end of the road. these are the people who finally bought a VCR when DVD came out and the people who bought their first CD player when MP3 players came out. They are almost always one step behind everyone else, and they need any and all products to be VERY easy to use. Once a company/technology has the mass market, the only consumers left to fight for are the late adopters, who are hard if not impossible to reach. Once you are trying to get these people to use a technology, you know that the market has hit a wall. it appears to me that at least in North America, we have probably reached that point. The older generation of americans who are not already online are very unlikely to get online anytime soon, and the people who just refuse to use technology (late adopters) are so small in number, that even if you get them on the bandwagon, you would still not grow your market by much. So in terms of the current technology it looks like we have hit the wall in the number of users. But that does not mean that this is the limit. New technologies that allow people to connect to the internet indirectly, or through divices other than PC's will expand the nets user-base anyway.
Fool me once...shame on you, fool me twice...won't be fooled again (our president)
Does anyone have a solution for people who don't spend a lot of time on the internet, but want high speed periodically, like to check their email once or twice a day? It seems like such people aren't really served by the current model offered by cable/DSL.
I live in San Francisco where you'd think the Internet was as pervasive as the air we breathe, and to some degree it is. But I'm originally from Wyoming, (no broke back mountain jokes please) and I can tell you that most people there don't have computers.
What they do have however, is Playstations and Xbox's. The reasons why are numerous. Cost, lack of options, etc.
I believe that the next generation consoles, particularly the PS3, along with Ajaxy Web 2.0 and the continued proliferation of broadband to the home, will truly start to bring the Internet to the masses.
A computer is still intimidating and a tough sell to a lot of these people... but a $300 game machine that your 4 kids are begging for, that's an easy sell.
Once they discover that it has a decent web browser and that there's a whole new world of communication and content out there... then things will start to really grow.
Guess I can't mod this thread now, but it must be a said. Regulate a sector of business and its growth will slow end of story.
...., and that is the problem. Every one wants to fix than, encourage this, and ban that bad act. The net as we knew ins days past with it's with its free porn and heady freedom is gone, sigh, one more frontier being tamed. That will mean less freedom on the net, guaranteed. Hope this all comes, like the wild west, with improvements in welfare and public safety, but that has yet to be realized.
Governments, businesses, lawyers isp's, and such are all playing an increasingly complex game of regulation and political maneuvering these days. Much less than in years before. All this extra "stuff" has a cost, it slows the speed of development and growth of most aspects of the service. Primarily due to the extra hoops and liabilities that users must now jump through and avoid.
This once happened with the expansion of the USA into the new unpopulated territories in the west. Before regulation you had true freedom and could do so many things, the resources where there to be tapped and there was little penalty for abusing them. Basically it was a rush to be the best, damn the laws, sense, reason or moderation. As regulation came, so did law order and subsequently slower progress. This maturation cycle is unfortunately unlikely to stop now that the "value" (different depending on who you are, car dealer or government) of the Internet is more or less universally recognized.
Now "they" all want a hand the mix of regulations and laws. All seem to think that net wold be better if
So, you're the one sending me all of that email.
Happy meals fund terrorism
According to the article, a significant number of people say "access at work is sufficient."
That's a rational economic decision. 8 hours a day for reading personal email and blogging should be enough for most people.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
...is that it's not worth the hassle, since ISPs are placing all kinds of restrictions on usage. Read your ISP's TOS and AUP some time. Most of them are surprisingly restrictive, even though they don't enforce them. I'd be running a webserver, and e-mail server and VoIP over my connection, except that my ISP won't extend its high-cap services to my neighborhood (won't upgrade their equipment), and they severely throttle upload bandwidth. The #1 question I get on forums is about hosting files.
The future of the Internet is personal services: Getting the content you want how you want it, and taking the content you have and distributing it how you want. The iPod's popularity should make that absolutely crystal-clear. The average high-speed internet user around my neck of the woods has several PCs, a router and a hub. Network devices like mini-fileservers and web-enabled black-boxes are the next extension to this. Boy, would I love it if I could 'beam' content to a media player in my car from my home network. I would *pay* for this service. I would *pay* for upgraded bandwidth, but my ISP doesn't want the business.
We all want cheap bandwidth and control of our content. Bandwidth bandwidth bandwidth. It's about the bandwidth, guys.
For growth to continue, prices need to come down. $20/mo for 1-2mbps shared is the sweet spot IMHO. Cable companies keep the price high while adding bandwidth, they really need a lower tier.
And phone companies? They need to decide that POTS is legacy and offer similar plans, and instead brand themselves as reliable VoIP (bifurcate voice from data)..
(And next week, how to rid the world of all known diseases...)
When dealing with a computer problem, I look for 8 solutions. When my wife wants my help with housework, she's learned that the trick is to give me "explicit" instructions, without multiple paths. Likewise, when she is doing something on the computer, once she learns an approach, she normally keeps doing it without considering other options.
It's not about being old or slow, it's about "do you care about this?"
She likes to cook, she'll work on 10 different ways to make a chicken and rice meal. I can make rice, only because she told me what to do once. BTW: while I'm sure there is a way to make rice in the microwave, I've never explored it, and in fact, I use the same pot each time.
If you don't care to "learn" how something works, you develop a process. I have no interest in learning how to cook, so I don't learn options, I just learn what to do.
You are interested in computers, therefore, you find a path. I bet when it comes to laundry, someone taught you how to wash your shirts once, and you've never experimented with different combinations of hanging the clothes to dry or running the dryer, have you? My mom could teach you all the ways to make different types of shirts require more/less ironing and different levels of softness, but I don't care. In college, I memorized settings for each shirt type, and never experimented.
Alex
Good point. Computers are intimidating to most end users that I deal with on a daily basis. They are all so afraid to 'mess something up' that most of them do not take full advantage of the services our IT dept has to offer. Having a console that you cannot mess up without physical damage sounds like a better idea to your average end user who wants nothing more than to surf the web anyway. The toughest sell I believe will not be the four to five hundred bucks on the console, but the monthly forty to fifty Mom and Dad will have to shell out. The people that are willing to pay for broadband have it, but those who do not want to spend that money do not. Maybe if the price was right, they would pick it up. This also leads to another question - since broadband access is so widespread now have the prices cheapened enough to bring in those that think it has been too high? My monthly subscription price hasn't dropped...
Victory shall be mine!
I would like to see the breakdown of reasons for not being connected. And how many of those folks that answered the phone didn't think their household was "online" but their kids were dialing into aol when they got home from school. And how many of those people were just using the Internet from their library or school for financial reasons. Or like the guy who didn't check email himself, but had his secretary print out the emails and bring them to him. He was still making use of the Internet at work, just not typing at a keyboard.
And ultimately who the heck cares besides the marketeers for the ISPs? If some people don't want to bother with the Internet, then why is this a problem? Sure Computers could be simpler, but I think if the average computer were more simple (meaning reduced functionality) than it is now, but still as expensive, then a lot fewer people would buy them.
64% of households is a number for the ISPs, for those of us on the web the more interesting numbers would be how many people actually access the web, or email, or some other Internet carried service regardless of the location.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Maybe it's reached its saturation point because of those "luddites"? There are plenty of people who live as comfortably as they wish without the Internet and have no desire to get it, and those people aren't going to die out for a few decades. Spend some time in Oklahoma or Arkansas."
It's more than just "dying out" that keeping it going. They're being replaced with people to whom the Internet isn't their whole life. The only thing that'll move the adoption of the Internet forward is necessity, and contrary to the geek viewpoint. The Internet isn't necessary for the majority, just nice to have.
Anyone considered, that the slow of growth could be entirely the fault of the current administration in the US, the huge monopolies on the market coupled with lax regulations and prohibitively expensive costs for the home user?
/capita ratio is already higher in those countries, so saturation is _clearly_ not the problem in the USA. Of course those countries support or at least do not prohibit the growth of the Internet by silly laws and monopolies.
Sweden and Japan seems to have no problem in internet usage growth even though the
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Is this simply a combination of luddites and a statistical quirk, or is the Internet reaching its saturation point in the U.S.?
There's a difference?
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Shouldn't that be "given me brief control" in your sig?
To me, owning a computer without Internet access would be like owning a one passenger car without a trunk. Sure, you can still use it, but it makes it's usefulness extremely limited.
Even the smartcar has a passenger seat and minimal trunk space to carry groceries and whatnot. Imagine a car that could *only* drive you around. To me, that's like a computer without the Internet.
For years Joe Sixpack has been spoonfed television broadcasts. All of this interaction is "too much work" for the truly lazy and people with sedate minds.
In the same way, for writing something that takes serious thought, I prefer a pad of paper over any computer ever made. (Writing code is obviously an exception.) Writing on paper is single-task by nature. I mean, I can write other things on that pad of paper, but all I can do is write. I can't play solitare on it. A computer gives too many options, and so makes it harder to focus on one.
And before you dismiss me as another luddite, I've been a professional software engineer for twenty years. (Feel free to dismiss me as undisciplined, too easily distracted, but a luddite I am not.)
My mother lives out in the middle of nowhere (nearest town is over 15 miles away). I brought her a computer so she could access the internet and e-mail me. Well, it turns out that there is not an ISP with an access number that is local to her. So, no net access (she can't afford the long distance). There are still plenty of people who live in areas like that.
To make the obvious connection here, if you look at the Statistical Abstract 2006 Chart 1117 in the Information & Communications section, you will see that household penetration is lower for many things that you would think are near 100%: telephones (95.5%), cable television (69.8%), internet connections (54.4%), etc. Telephones, for example, had a hoursehold penetration rate of 61.8% in 1950 - see page 130 of the Trends in Telephone Service report. You could argue that adoption rates for technologies are faster, but you are still talking a slow climb once you reach a certain threshold.
Your situation doesn't necessarily mean that Internet access will be mandatory for you. Some companies and individuals have their CPA deal with everything, including the Internet part.
A middleperson could be applied to all your other examples.
I'm 17, and the internet really does cut into alot of time I could be using for better things. I mean, I hate shit like myspace and I do have a blog, but rarely do I post to it. Honestly, it's trying to just keep up with all the news I read, and a few forums I'm addicted to, and the occasional IM. But all of those things add up when you're a student, no matter if it's college or not. I personally get wrapped up too much in the headlines for science, or what's coming in the new (X desktop environment of any sort). So I care less about what's important.
space is pretty cool.
The cost of basic living necessities are going up (gas for transportation, electricity for the home, misc. utilities rising) to the point that serious budgeting is taking place. My household already gave up on cable TV (our 2nd year), landline phone access (no cheap DSL), 60F thermostat settings for the winter and relegating the SUV only to short hops or when professionally needed (I'm a regular gigging musician lugging around huge speakers - it's a legit use). Saving that $60 per month (Comcast cable modem) really makes a difference. And for the majority of what I use the internet for, I can do it easily enough through my day job. Hell, I even use an iMac because - well 1 of the reasons ;-) - it only has a 70 or so watt powersupply compared to a 300-500W PC desktop psu.
A major factor of internet growth slowing is due to corporate greed. Costs everywhere are too high when factored into the rest of the average US citizens budget. The bottom is soon going to collapse - I can't wait.
Well if anything's going to turn me off using the Net (well the Web anyway) it's things like the full-page ad that interupts viewing of the referenced article.
I notice that Wired.com has also started spitting those annoying ads recently too.
When confronted with such an ad I just hit the back button and don't return.
I'm happy to accept banner ads (even skyscrapers) but any site that dishes up pop-up/under/over ads and full-page interstitials immediately gets crossed off my list of "sites worth visiting"
Am I the only one who got that ad on the BWO site -- or doesn't anyone else care that the Net is becoming increasingly like TV in respect to the intrusiveness of advertising?
the economy and infrastructure of the U.S. are poised for a big stall for several reasons (loss of credibility of dollar due to inability to pay interest on national debt, light sweet crude production is peaked, big foreign customers seeking new markets in south america and asia makng u.s. less relevent, climate change, outsourcing)....don't worry about the internet, worry about basic infrastructure.
They'll go out of their way to force search engines to index them. And this isn't even counting the spamhorde robo-blogs, which are an even lower lifeform.
I wish there was an easy way to segregate them, but I don't know if this would be possible.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I think that the lack of useful applications of the internet is finally overtaking the novelty factor. While not a luddite, (mostly) I don't even bother with email anymore, and only use the web to read news, get driving directions and order pizza. Where at one point $50/mo seemed reasonable for high speed, I now balk at spending $15/mo for DSL.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
That's like saying that small business in the US has reached its saturation point.
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
And it's not just the old or poor who are living offline
Pretty sure everyone they interviewed was in the 40's and 50's range. Sounds pretty old to me. =P
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
Choosing to remain offline doesn't necessarily make one a luddite. Perhaps people are simply disinterested. The Web and the Net are, in fact, not that important to real life.
For what do you really need the Internet?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The article fails to mention how the U.S. stacks up with other first world countries. My guess is that we're pretty far behind. Let's face it, the U.S. is a great place to live, but only if you are in the lucky half with adequate finances and education. So much for the tide lifting all boats. "Fuck you, I got mine," is pretty much the American mindset these days. It's probably the precise attitude expressed by the passengers on board the Titanic as it sank into the ocean. Kind of sad.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
"The problem is not the Internet, but the people on the Internet, specifically the con artists, scammers, and criminals who now have a new way of fleecing honest citizens. As long as the media contnues to blow every story out of proportion, Internet growth will die out."
And exactly what proportion should those stories be?
Actually, part of it *IS* the age. People who age without exercising the analytical regions of their brain will begin to lose the ability to think in the way necessary to operate a piece of technology. It's a natural process of brain degredation attributed to lack of 'creative' usage, being locked into a daily routine, etc, etc. The brain is just like the physical muscles in our body. If you don't use it, you lose it.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
If you spend 16 hours daily on a computer, then that time is 16 hours of non-human interaction. Human beings are not designed to operate in that way.
Evolution created a creature that thrives on sunlight, the smiles of real people's faces (not Max Headroom), etc. Unless we re-engineer DNA so that we are soliltary creatures wedded to computers, most of us have already reached the saturation point for computer interaction. The 1% annual growth in Internet usage is actually an overestimate.
No, it takes more control of your brain by you trying to figure out that that sig doesn't look quite right.
I'm also controlling it by making you read this reply.
People's brains haven't evolved to cope with such power. One of the major mechanisms for learning anything is repitition - repeating the same, message over and over so it goes into the unconscious. Likewise if the repetition is to be effective, then the mind must be focused on it for a significant amount of time. The net does not promote this structure - what it promotes is instant gratification and unstructured information wandering. At some point deal with this, either the person saturates and cannot take in any more messages, or they become a dumb slave - searching constantly on anything their mind can come up with. My guess is we will start to see more and more people choosing to leave the internet due to drops in productivity.
I don't know what it is, but apparently it isn't blogs or podcasts. I'd say when you can easily and legally watch any episode of any TV show/movie for cheap (say $.25 or maybe ads) there might be a suddenly larger market.
Back when I paid for dialup with my televideo 955 there was a nationwide market of several thousand customers for USENET, email, etc. Now it's much larger, thank you www. Surely there can be something next.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Exactly.
As I have often said, this entire Internet mess is the fault of George Bush. If we hadn't elected him, Linux would be running everywhere, Wikipedia wouldn't have misleading information, virii wouldn't exist, phishing would be non-existant, and Google wouldn't be trading our secret identities to the government for a pat on the head.
Anyways, back to reality.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Note: Ken_g6, this isn't aimed at you - your tips are spot on...
If you know what you are doing, have no qualms about "dumpster diving", and are willing to get up off the couch for a weekend to peruse business park/office building dumpsters - most of the time you can get enough working parts for a computer - for free!
Indeed, if you work for any business with a large enough IT department, and are nice to the IT staff, you can sometimes get whole systems for nothing. The last company I worked at, I managed to grab tons of old hardware - most of the machines in my house are made from scrap they gave me.
I can't tell you how much hardware can be found just by looking at dumpsters behind office buildings and in business parks (another tip - if your municipality has "bulk-trash-pickup", browse around "rich area" of town when their scheduled dates are near - rich people are somtimes idiots when it comes to computers, and tend to throw out 1-2 year old boxes and buy new when they get infested with spyware). Make sure you have a truck (small 4-banger pickup will do), and some scruffy clothes on (jeans, gloves, boots, hat, t-shirt, etc - remember, you will be working with garbage), and just tell any security you are moving and need boxes - most will go away. If they persist, appologize and leave immediately. If you find some stuff, grab it and take it home before grousing elsewhere (hard to pull the "just-moving-and-need-boxes" bit when you have 19 inch rack in the back of your pickup). If you need more parts, Goodwill, other thrift stores, and helpful friends can get you other stuff. For the rest, you may need to EBay or buy new parts.
Now, you won't have the latest and greatest machine on the planet just to play WoW on, but I guarantee (especially using FOSS) that you will have a good machine to do real work on.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
When I was younger, I chatted for hours every day on AOL Instant Messenger. In fact, I cultivated what my friends and I refer to as "IM game." I felt it was my best medium for aggressively persuing women and making them fall in love with me. I have grown bored with AOL chat, though, and I use it far less. Perhaps others are using chat a little less, but I doubt it. Internet usage should be growing as the older, non-computer using generation passes on and new children are born and quickly become addicted.
Wow, you're a moron. HAY GUYS EVERYTHING IS M$s FAULT! Try living in the real world for a little instead of spending your entire day on Slashdot, and then maybe you'll gain some perspective.
The *real* reason for the slowdown in growth is that Worldcom/MCI is not fudging the growth numbers anymore. Previous growth and usage numbers were pure BS, now it is only partial BS...
Oh well, what the hell...
Okay. So the U.S. internet usage is stalling out because it's too expensive and insecure. How might we go about fixing some of this crap, anyway? Some insights and suggestions...
1. Dialup shouldn't be a third of the cost of cable, and cable shouldn't be a third of the cost of my electric bill. Dropping the cost of high speed internet would speed up its rate of adoption here in the U.S. - after all, aren't we 16th in global per-capita broadband usage? The increased rate of adoption would lead to more customers overall, which equals more money for the ISPs total. (If they'd cut the cost of cable in half here, I can assure their customer base would more than double, more than making up for the cost.) Of course, this won't happen as soon as tiered internet connections become a reality, since things like cable connections will price-hike again into the enterprise pricing range...
2. It sure would be nice if there was less hardware involved. I know it's a necessity, this whole business with routers and switches and modems and such, but rolling some of this stuff up into one single box would make a lot of people I know a lot less reluctant to get on the broadband bandwagon. It's a bit more complex than most users want to deal with, and it's pretty expensive to boot. Most people here shy away from the net - especially high speed internet connections - because of the hidden hardware costs piled on top of the huge monthly cost, and having one single box that does everything for a comparatively low price would be swell.
3. If end users want better security, they're just going to have to learn about their goddamn computers. That's all there is to it. User ignorance is the number one cause of security breaches, and idiot-proofing software and hardware just obfuscates it further for the legitimate, learned end user. However, it'd also be nice to, for the occasions upon which we all slip up, have a good professional antivirus package that works and doesn't cost some 40-60 dollars with bullshit subscription fees thrown in. Just because.
Might I also add that computers and the internet are really losing their luster. I won't argue that the internet doesn't have near boundless potential, and I won't argue that computers don't have the same, but they're no longer the amazing, totally new, super-futuristic gizmos of tomorrow. Not even gaming computers are really advancing by leaps and bounds anymore, and overall they just seem like a family of old, overcomplicated, overhyped machines to the average person out there today. So in short, not only are most users underqualified in the common sense department to use the internet safely, and underbudgeted to afford to do so, but the internet just isn't worth it to a lot of people out there even if they can and know how to log on.
The thing is the iMac, with monitor, only consumes about 95 watts at peak. It's hard to get close to that when as you note your LCD alone consumes 60 (though the one in the article was 30) - it's hardly reasonable to expect most other systems to consume only 20-60 watts, even if you build it very carefully.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One of the problems is that high speed access is either to slow for modern use (dialup), or to expensive for average users (broadband).
There needs to be widespread internet access that's only around $30 a month, and perhaps is not as fast as other high-speed lines today but is at least 512k down/256k up.
My thinking is wireless will fill this niche, Cable and Phone companies are too stupid and slow to do so. I think a few communities trying out wireless internet will have some great success and it will spread from there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is just empiricle evidence of course, but the nature of multiple paths, whether its the computer's interface or the sorting through the billions of results on Google, really seems to confuse the older generation.
I don't think this is entirely OT, but the above is in fact not true, and has been proven over and over. It's a stereotype based on ageism. Studies show that the percentage of people with the inability to actually get comfortable and knowledgeable with a computer are roughly the same across all age groups. It's just that more seniors don't feel a huge need to get one. If you are retired in 1920 and all you have to do is ride your horse down to the country store twice a week for food, and once more over to your sisters for tea, why are you going to buy one of those fancy horseless carriages?
I've known plenty of 60+ seniors who know their way in, out, around, sideways, diagonally, and interdimensionally thru a computer. I've also known plenty of teenagers, college students, and twenty somethings who take one look at a computer, scream, and run the other way.
The inability to work a computer does not come from age, but from the inability to adapt to the whole computing metaphor. Give a group of seniors both a reason to use a computer and enough time and they will learn it. As seniors they may learn slower than school kids, since kids learn more quickly than adults, but the can learn it just fine. The stereo
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
This would at least provide an incentive for people to sign up and start using the internet.
/F
Then, you can show them Google, Wikipedia and Slashdot and they may never leave.
Show them Slashdot, and their minds may leave... for good.
Stupidity... has a habit of getting its way.
I realize this comment had a "negative" tone but I think the overall observation is correct. The stock market and it's expectation from investors is largely out of control. Everything is marketing, spin and PR with investment firms. How often do we see a company do fairly well in a quarter despite a sad lack of return on a major product but that's ok they laid off 1000 people so overall this quarter it's ok.
I vaguely recall a time that when a company did something like that (lay offs to better adjust the operational costs). It cost them in the stock market; that doesn't seem to happen anymore.
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
...I play lots of sports, I read books, I go to movies and plays, occasionally some parties. If I need to talk to friends or family, I phone them. I don't need the internet when I'm at home. Only at work do I ever use it, and even then it's not necessary. At home, I get by just fine without it. There's nothing so vital on the internet that can't wait until the next day at work to find out about.
It is worthy to note the extent to which the readers of this article are being misled.
The examples of people opting out are:
Male 47 year-old CEO - probably too busy running his business.
Female 39 year-old Finance person - uses the net during the day at work.
Female 57 year-old Lawyer - intellectual likely more comfortable with a book.
Female 50 year-old Flower shop owner - most people over 40 start to get set in their ways, choose hobbies they stick to, and have other priorities than surfing the net.
You want to impress me? Show some data that states people aged 15 to 40 are walking away from it. That would make my head turn.
Cogito Ergo Sum
Next, the dot-com boom really sparked a lot of people to get online. There were things to do online. Everyday, new dot-com startups were forming. Now, there are retively few reasons to go online. Research, shopping, gaming and e-mail. Sure, there are other reasons to go online, but not everyone knows these reasons. Everyone that got the internet when it was the thing to do are canceling because there are more things to do. E-mail is being replaced by text messaging on cell phones. You can get unlimited text messages for 9.99, way cheaper than most internet services.
Also, the number of viruses is outrageous. You go online and walk off with ITDs (Internet Transmitted Diseases). Mr. Joebob will never update his antivirus and as far as he cares, he bought it once, thats all he needs to buy. Why should he have to buy it every year. With the amount of spam mail, I am almost ready to ditch e-mail and go pay 9.99 for text messaging since everyone and their cousin has cell phones. Porn is everyone on the net. You can search for something like "Body Piercing" because you want to get a belly button ring and see more anatomy than you do in Med-School.
I for one am glad I have the router I do. I can assign up to 5 different websites to a MAC address and thats all that computer can surf to. When my kids get old enough to use the computer by themselves, that will be enabled. The internet is way less safe than it was in the late 90s.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
I didn't say it was RIGHT (or wrong), just that it is economically rational.
Not all human behavior is economically rational but it rarely hurts to look at economics for a 1st approxiamation as to why people do things ... just as long as you also look at stuff like morality too.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
+5 insightful!!
Believe it or not there are still many of us who either can't get it or have to pay through the nose for it (I pay $80/mo).
Bwahahahahahaha
/. Oh the shame
Parent and grandparent must be AOL'ers !!!
I'd never admit that on
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
If I had to guess, I'd say that growth is slowing down because our infrastructure is stuck in the tarpit of failed deregulation. I just checked yesterday, and in Germany you can get a broadband connection approximately equivalent to one for which I'd have to pay $50/mo., for only €9/mo. In Sweden it seems regular people can get 100MBit connections to their homes at reasonable prices.
Maybe nobody else is jumping to get on the Internet because it's not getting any cheaper and it's not getting any better. $40-$50/mo. is a lot to pay for a lot of people. The giant media/telecom conglomerates certainly aren't making anything any better.
(1) "which not being TCP/IP counts as having Internet" should read "which not being TCP/IP doesn't count as having Internet"
(2) It is the payprus in question, not the second volume of Aristotle's Poetics that was accidentally packed the canopic jar; otherwise Dr. Wilhelm Brugsch would be much better knonw.
(3) The title of Dr. Brugsch's letter in Zeitschrift fur agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde is "Eine Antwort auf meinen lieben Doktor Esel (Budge): Sie konnten nicht Uro-Chaldean vom Hinterteil einer Ratte unterscheiden."
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't think it's a straw man at all. When you scan your credit card into the gas pump, the number still goes out on a network somewhere. In fact it probably goes over the Internet at some point, probably using much the same strength of encryption that you'd use if you typed it into a web form at Amazon.com.
By not using the Internet the only security you're really gaining is an invunerability to phishing schemes that occur over email, since you're not using email and the Web. It doesn't give you the opportunity to compromise your own security, but there are still plenty of ways for other people to do it.
Just because you don't have a computer at home doesn't mean your data isn't going over the Internet, and doesn't make you invunerable to identity theft, especially mass theft, like the "disappearance" of backup tape sets which can potentially contain tens of thousands of customer records.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
In other news, interweb usage is at 35%.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Gemmy the Grammar Gremlin say:
Only you can prevent diction errors!
Uncap bandwidth. I recently moved to florida and Id love to buy a big flatscreen for the livingroom so i could share christmas morning with my parents in california!
All the technology is there, we just need uncapped up streams!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
I'm reminded of what I've read about the car industry in the teens and twenties, which had also saturated and stopped growing.
By that time everybody who wanted a car had one. The only new cars the makers were selling were replacements for old ones that had worn out. The solution was forced upgrades, by instituting the model year change. "Oh, your car is a 1926? Mine is the new 1927. You're a loser!"
In the computer biz, forced upgrades sell hardware, but they don't necessarily sell Internet. Price (high-speed is lots cheaper here in Canada, BTW: I pay $CDN34.95 a month for ADSL), content and applications sell Internet. The latest broadband convert in our family is my Mum, and her killer app is VOIP, chatting with various relatives (including me). I set her up with a headset and web camera and she's having a ball with it. She's 67. Didn't have her own computer until she was 60. Never even used a computer before she was 55. She is particularly fond of lot of the streaming media, like BBC Radio 3. Broadband has been a whole new experience for her, after 56k dialup.
...laura
you sound as paranoid as these guys: http://anonetnfo.brinkster.net.nyud.net:8090/
Agreed. I wish there was a way to do the opposite, block out corporate PR fluff pieces and press release junk. I guess it all depends on what sort of stuff you're looking for; one man's "clutter" is another man's "content."
I've always thought that it would be nice if there was a button next to each result on a search engine's results page that would block that domain from future searches. Or maybe not domain-level blocking, but perhaps to block that page, and everything that links to it, or that's linked to from it. Or perhaps just downgrade that page in the search results, and downgrade each page that's linked to or from it by a certain amount, depending on how many "hops" out from the original page it is. (So if you click the "This is stupid" button, it gets a -10 rating, pages that link to it get -5, pages that are connected to those pages get -3, etc.) With a few clicks you'd be able to start knocking out big sections of the web that are tightly linked together from your results.
Over time, if the search engine tracked your preferences, the version of the internet that you would see in your results might be totally different from what someone with different preferences would see. And really, that seems to be what people are asking for -- not everyone wants to see the same Internet.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
The 47-year-old Princeton University grad thinks the Net is largely a waste of time. Assistants print out e-mails for him and researchers give him paper copies of Wall Street analysts reports from the Web.
It's a waste of time for him, but not for his assistants? Ha! It would be much faster for everyone if this guy just spent the ten seconds it takes to learn how to read his email and not make it an affair that involves countless others. This reminds me of the exective that writes his blog on paper and has his assistants post it for him. What a waste of time. I mean, the whole point of the blog is to be able to type in fast right? If you have to hire a staff to do your blog for you, you're missing the point. This attitude actually creates more work for everyone involved.
No Sigs!
It would also be easy enough to take a second credit card reader, velcro it to the side of the monitor, and then swipe every credit card through that a few times. All you'd have to do is put on a frustrated face when it didn't work, and then swipe it through the real credit-card acceptor that was actually connected to the machine. I bet most people wouldn't ever even notice, I've seen lots of POS systems that have multiple scanners attached to them (e.g., one built into the keyboard, one up on the monitor).
... let them do it a few times, then when it doesn't work, offer to scan it on the one attached to the register. This has happened to me many times at the grocery store, it would never be questioned.
Heck you can make people do it themselves -- put the fake one on the counter and when people go to pay with a credit card point to it, people will swipe
People are very cavalier about swiping their credit/debit/ATM cards -- a few years I saw a TV station in a major city (I think it was NYC) put up a kiosk on the street near an ATM with a reader on it and a sign that said "Clean your credit card's magnetic strip here!" People ran their cards through without even thinking twice about it. (Heck, you could write "Credit Card Degausser" on the front and I bet some idiots would use it.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Seriously, I just moved into a new place and I opted for no Net connection. I simply end up wasting an insane amount of time, after which, I ask myself, "What in the hell did I get accomplished?" 9 times out of 10, my answer to myself is "nothing". Honestly, the Net is so clogged up with commercial crap, and re-hashed news wire stuff, and useless blogs, that there's really very little new, original content on the Net that's easy to find. The signal to noise ratio is waaaay down from where it was, say, back in '95. So, I'll poke around during the day at work, but I like my free time to be free to actually *do* things.
So, I am part of that statistic. I don't know how typical I am, though. I've been using the Net since before the Web was around, and I guess I feel like I've already seen most of the good stuff.
I don't respond to AC's.
1% growth now means a lot more than it did in previous years because it is 1% of a much larger base.
For example:
If you start with 1 million and you have 1% growth, that's 10,000 new users but, if you start with 100 million users and have 1% growth, that's 1 million new users.
Maybe it's grown as much as it's supposed to? Why this attitude of "It must keep growing forever; any slowdown is bad. BAAAD!!" Believe it or not, at some point things are able to serve their purpose and have no need for further change.
In the human body unchecked growth has a name: cancer
Why should we expect new and different things on the internet when big media companies are still dishing out rehashes and sequels in the movies?
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
When you live at work, why do you need the internet at home?
So the question is, are these people getting off being taken into account in the growth of the net?
As the current older people are steadily replaced by younger people, more people will get broadband.
...
How the reason that in the EU POTS was per-minute billing was because it was harder to wire, and that the US enjoyed flat-rate because it was somehow better?
Then, when digital packet switched connections started taking over (and surplanting old circuit-switched POTS and analog multicast), the US went to the equivalent of pay-by-the-minute (50$ USD/month) for slow speeds, while Japan, Sweden, and other parts of the world all had 100Mbps to your door for the same or less?
Even Canada has better rates and speeds in its major urban centres (Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, etc, etc) than the equivalent US cities (Portland, San Francisco, New York City, Washington DC). What's going on?
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I know several people who stopped using the net because they got sick of being pwnd all the time due to windows crap. They got tired of mostly spam email, viruses, having to haul the machine to the friendly windows repair shop at 50$ an hour or more, despite having a firewall and antivir. And etc. And the friendly windows repair ship is mostly never going to clue them in to doing things differently, that would be killing their cash cow, where they make the bulk of their money.
There's a HUGE business built up between "updates" that fake people out that they require a new machine because they all ship with too little RAM and from windows bugs and bogusness. This isn't a cash cow, it's vast herds covering the plains, and a lot of consumers are just getting tired of it. Of course there's going to be a drop off. All broadband does for these people is let their machines get borked FASTER than on dialup.
I'm thinking that the Internet will be a disruptive technology that makes the media conglomerates irrevelant.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Here's the big problem with much of the middle of the USA: the population is so spread out that trying to reach them with land-line broadband is too exorbitantly expensive to do.
This is where new wireless networking technologies such as WiMAX will make the difference, since WiMAX can handle thousands of users per antenna array and also have far more range for the signal than Wi-Fi setups. With WiMAX, rural communities will finally get full broadband access, since it's cheaper to put up a small number of antenna arrays to serve a whole community than to hardwire everyone out in less-populated areas to support ADSL or cable modem broadband.
I STILL live in Wyoming and I completely reject your statement that "most people here don't have computers."
The year is 2006 and most people DO have computers, even in Wyoming.
I suggest you quit pandering to the hillbilly image that your Kalifornian friends have of this state and the people in it.
There are a lot of damn fine and very smart people living here...most of them with a computer at home.
Having a computer doesn't make you smart, nor does the absence of one make you stupid.
I'm simply saying that people in certain areas have more accessibility to technology than in others. Additionally, I do strongly believe that we "ain't seen nothin'yet" in terms of internet use.
Cheap powerful accessible hardware, ubiquitous broadband, and the maturation of web technologies will kick off a 2nd stage boost in net usage that will make the last 10 years look like a snail trail.
SHON
Stop blaming the customers. Blame the vendors. If increase in online use is an important statistic, then increase broadband value.
I expect online use to expand once high-speed data for handhelds is more broadly available and affordable. Once online is truly portable (not "portable" as in $30/mo surcharge and lug a $1000-$2000 blocky 5-pound lap heater around), there ought to be another surge.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I'm an IP engineer for a telco/ISP and in fall 2001 I was tasked with the R&D and implementation of an H.323-based videoconferencing service. I had several popular high-end set-top terminals set up in a lab with Internet access.
One of my coworkers had a NYC contact who was a top video tech for some firm in Manhattan. This tech had taken a retired, but still perfectly functional, H.323 terminal home and plugged it into the output jacks on his living room TV.
For fun, we would call this guy's house and watch local NYC stations. He had what was standard DSL for the day, 768K down/256K up. We would dial him at 185K to allow for overhead on the upstream from him. The terminals negotiated H.263 video, and G.729 audio. Quality was surprisingly good for the vast majority of the calls--very, very watchable.
The most surprising and most awful call was on 9/11, when we connected to watch live local coverage. It was actually fine until late morning Central Time. Then packet loss due to congestion and network disruption made it unwatchable, and we also decided that others probably needed the bandwidth to the area more than we did--though several coworkers here had family who lived/worked near the towers.
My guess is that most broadband upstream caps are set high enough to support fairly decent video/audio conferencing, but the standard consumer-grade video equipment doesn't provide the delay, jitter and loss performance that high-end boardroom units supply.
this has more implications than what is written here. one of them is that America will lose it footing of Internet domination !.