Give People Broadband In The Home... And They'll Actually Use It

from the amazing,-but-true dept

While people may not be rushing out to find broadband in the great wide open, when they have it their homes, apparently they use it. Over the past few years many broadband providers simply assumed that their customers would use broadband in a similar way to how they used dialup -- perhaps a little more often and for a little longer, but that the activities they used it for wouldn't change. They used that assumption in figuring out how much bandwidth they really needed. Instead, of course, people discovered that once you have always on, fast connections (with flat-rate pricing for unlimited usage) it allows you to do lots of things you wouldn't do otherwise with that internet connection. This has actually freaked out some broadband service providers who simply weren't set up to handle all of the bandwidth their customers were demanding and leading them to things like internet traffic shaping or simply blocking out apps they don't like. Still, it should come as no surprise that when people are given unlimited access at decent speeds that they'll find ways to use it. This is only going to increase over time, as well, though it's not clear that all of the service providers realize it yet.