The Less Bandwidth You Have the Less You’ll Use It

While the ultimate amount of bandwidth every home will want and demand in the next ten years is very much up for debate, there is one thing I know first hand: the less bandwidth you have the less you’ll use the Internet.

This is opposite of the most often used analogy of “if we build it they will come”, where whatever capacity you put into the ground users will find a way to fill up.

The reason I’m writing this now is because for the last couple of days my wireline cable access has been down and I’ve been forced to rely solely on my wireless EV-DO card to get online.

Now this isn’t the first time this has happened. Back in the fall in the week during our move to a new apartment I was faced with the same lack of wireline access, and any time I’m on the road I’m likely connecting online wirelessly. So I know what it means to only have 500Kbps or so to work with.

In trying to exist with that little bandwidth, I’ve made a few observations:

- With less bandwidth it’s not just that you can’t do as much, it’s that you don’t want to do as much. For example, sometimes the speeds I get wirelessly are capacious enough to support watching a YouTube video as the way God intended: instant on and with no buffering. But many other times it'll hang, the video trying to play back faster than it can download. So what ends up happening? Eventually I start dreading trying to watch any online video when I’m accessing the Internet wirelessly.

It’s not that I can’t watch YouTube videos; if need be I can always click on a video, hit pause, and let it load before playing it back. It’s just that I don’t want to, I don’t want to have to deal with the hassle of waiting or sitting through a video riddled with hiccups.

So while I do subscribe to the belief that the more bandwidth that’s available the more users will find ways to use that capacity, I also support the notion that the less bandwidth one has the less one not only can but will do with it.

- I’m increasingly reliant on bigger bandwidth networks for my profession. While this probably shouldn’t be a surprise, it is a frustrating realization on the morning of a day when wireline access is still shaky and I’m supposed to be working with not one but two different videocalling applications today -- testing out TVBlob by talking with its makers in Italy through my TV, and conducting a video interview with Michael Curri, who’s based near Paris, about his work helping communities leverage broadband to promote economic development. These are two applications that either won’t work or at the very least I don’t want to even try to see if they’ll work wirelessly; it’s just not worth the hassle of dealing with limited bandwidth.

- At the same time, to a large degree I really don’t need a big bandwidth network to do what I need to do. Sure I’m limited in trying out newer high bandwidth apps, but in terms of my day-to-day life, only having 500-750Kbps of throughput is surprisingly sufficient. I mean, I’m able to surf the Web, check my email, interact with most hosted applications like an online word processor, and even watch the occasional YouTube video (when the situation warrants the wait). After lightly chastising a couple techie-friends recently for their admitted lack of a reliance on broadband, it’s startling to realize that I’ve been surviving with less than a meg of consistent service.

What this tells is me is that 1. a lot of tremendous things are possible with less than a meg of access, 2. the less bandwidth I have the less I try to use it, and 3. we’re still a helluva long ways from the point where the use of broadband is not only ubiquitous but woven into the fabric of our day-to-day lives.

On one last note, I don’t want anyone to think I’m disparaging my EV-DO card. In all honesty, I love the thing. Being able to access the Internet from anywhere at anytime is a phenomenally freeing experience. With hotels often charging $10 a night for wireless Internet, the $50 I spend a month on my EV-DO service seems like a bargain. And while I’ve been lamenting over the lack of bandwidth, this little card pretty reliably delivers a half a meg of connectivity, with the occasional burst as high as 2Mbps. It may not be fast but it works when I need it, and that’s all that matters.