The Age of Gigabit Connectivity

What good is a Ferrari if you can only drive it on side streets? You need to have access to superhighways to really experience its performance and get what it was built for - speed.

The same holds true with smartphones. What good is some slick smartphone if you don’t have access to a communications superhighway with gigabit connectivity for instantaneous downloads?

Having lightning-fast speed for network connectivity is the latest status symbol. In mid-September, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee in the United States announced that it was going to have one gigabit per second (1Gbps) wired network services available to both business and residential subscribers for about $349 a month.

That is a huge leap as far as service levels go. With 1Gbps service, you can download something like a ninety-minute movie (which takes up about one gigabyte of storage) in less than ten seconds. This speed is perfect for those doing a lot of video-based applications.

What about wireless networks? The next step is to see gigabit connectivity from a wireless provider to those subscribers with their smartphones.

Some have argued in the past about now gigabit speeds were unnecessary, they have always been proven wrong. You will always find ways to utilize bandwidth, especially if you are using smartphones today.

Thirty years ago, network speeds for corporate applications were mostly around 2.4Kbps and 4.8Kbps. That was all on analog lines as well, not digital services.

9.6Kbps was considered “high speed” at the time. 9.6Kbps modems were about $7,000 – a piece.

If you really had money, “new” 56Kbps digital service was available – but only in certain cities across the United States. Back in 1981, transmission facilities for corporations and their internal networks were still mostly analog.

Arguments for new applications always ended with, “Well, maybe we could do that but we just don’t have the bandwidth.” Bandwidth was always the stumbling block obstacle that killed many applications before they left the feasibility stage.

When bandwidth is so bountiful that it becomes a non-issue, new applications will grow exponentially and provide very different benefits. That is why some countries are very astute in upgrading their entire network infrastructure because they have made the strategic discovery that economic development equals broadband connectivity and broadband connectivity equals jobs in today’s global economy.

Having more bandwidth will accelerate the amount of applications that are feasible for customer service, social networking, and so many other applications.

There will be an explosion of video-based applications that will be able to work because they will not be constrained by a lack of bandwidth.

You can see some of this explosion now with the increase in usage of smartphones. As more people get on board with a smartphone, the networks are becoming utilised to a point where some network carriers are trying to stifle usage. Why would a carrier want to ration bandwidth if their networks could handle the increased usage?

It looks like the network carriers have not expanded their networks to handle all of this growth as well as provide high speeds for data transmission. This is not good when everyone is competing for global marketshare and having communications is such a new concept.

This is a time for real renovation and renaissance. Chattanooga has set the standard when it comes to where other cities should be in aiming at: one gigabit per second subscriber access to the network.

South Korea which looks like it will see 1Gbps access for subscribers by 2012 is also leading the charge for true broadband connectivity (1Gbps or above).

Google announced earlier this year that it would help five US cities attain one gigabit access and that really sent many cities out to apply to be considered. Over 1,000 applied.

With all of this activity between Google, South Korea and now the announcement of Chattanooga, the trend is definitely to get to a network subscriber access of one gigabit per second.

CARLINI-ISM: The Ferrari of phones demand having Autobahn network access, if you really want to get to utilise their full potential.

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