Link Hoewing, assistant vice president for Internet and technology policy at Verizon: Will 2003 usher in broadband era in America?
All players need to recognize that a media platform without new content is about as useful as an unplugged computer, just as jazzy new content without a delivery system is a colorless stream of electrons…
…Step back, and you can see the United States is recasting the Internet as a genuine multimedia platform, one that is high capacity with a flexible data network connecting all homes. For cable, wireless, satellite, and telecom providers, the fruits of competition and choice are investment in such a platform. For consumers, it is lavish content at lower prices.
Broadband does not need Content to succeed. By Content, I mean lavishly produced “shows.” That type of broadband Content will fail just like many of the dotcom “content” fucked companies (eg Pseudo.) Broadband will succeed when there is enough bandwidth, both going out and coming in, for individuals to be able to send things to other individuals and publish for groups. Successful broadband content will be more like Gawker than Sidewalk.com or more like Gizmodo than ZDNet.
The internet is best at connecting people to each other. Cable modems and ADSL try to make the internet a one-way medium, but broadband will have its full impact only when it symmetrical and widely adopted.
This comes via Kevin Werbach, who writes:
[The Bells] have never stopped yearning for the walled gardens of video dialtone or proprietary videotext services. If the broadband Net is turned into multimedia”, it will die the same death as all previous iterations of that vision.
