Continuing broadband adoption

Broadband adoption just keeps on growing. Now an article on CNN Money describes that the FCC states that broadband subscription jumps 38% in the U.S. as of June, 2004.

As I mentioned in my first post entitled, “Video games and the internet bubble. Is it time for dot com…the sequel?” there are many data points about broadband adoption and why this is important for innovation.

My contention always was that the dot com crash was due, in no small part, to people having to “suck a flood of internet content through a straw” since the bulk of people were still on dial-up modems in the early 2000’s. It’s different now and getting more so.

I had a colleague a couple of years ago that told me she had 10mbps fiber in her loft building in downtown San Francisco. I corrected her, “You mean 1mbps don’t you?” “Oh no,” she said. “It’s really, really fast. In fact, a guy that lives upstairs is running a server farm and his startup company is in his unit.” Thinking about risk management issues like heat buildup, server backup and scalability as she was describing his business, I found myself nonetheless really excited thinking about the possibilities of having access to that much bandwidth.

If we want a jet engine driving our economy, *real* broadband like hers is what’ll do it.