The future of broadband.

As quoted from this article,

"What’s stalling broadband deployment is a mismatch between the capabilities of the broadband infrastructure and the desires of broadband users. The way in which broadband providers deliver and bill for connectivity—a set monthly price for a specified amount of bandwidth regardless of how much of that bandwidth is used—sets the stage for a revenue model that financially penalizes providers who roll out bandwidth-hungry multimedia services. There is simply no incentive for providers to roll out services that consume more bandwidth because no additional revenue is tied to those services."

For those of us in the industry, this is a very important article with very complete and concise detailing of many of the issues we should all be watching. This message isn't something we can just put our fingers in our ears and sing. "La La La, I can't hear you." any longer. We are a part of this problem, we supply the pipe and we are not meeting the potential that our clients are now starting to demand.

This is not a situation of, "They don't want to pay for it." because they don't, they want broadband to be delivered at a reasonable cost - not an arm, leg and their first born. If we can't supply it at the price they are looking to pay you can bet your future (and may of us literally are) that someone else will. It doesn't matter if they do it because they have more money that us, or because they spend more money on lobbyists than we do or even if they don't play fair, this is business - BIG BUSINESS - and if we want to play, we need to step up to the plate and meet these demands.

As Jon Price put it in his excellent commentary, it is time for us to grow up. I would add, we need to understand the nature of our market better, find ways of connecting are far greater speeds at significantly lower costs and push the manufacturers to supply us with radios that deliver more throughput.