Michael Dell blamed the telecom industry, at CES, for holding up the development of the digital home and challenged the industry to accelerate the deployment of fibre to the home.
The problem with the telecoms industry is that it has always been mean with bandwidth. It has always put in the cheapest, minimalist system it can get away with.
When they were digging up my road to put in cable a decade ago they put in coax. OK it delivered the services on offer but surely fibre future-proofing would have been a saving in the long run.
When BT came out, eventually and grudgingly, with DSL, it went for the lowest data rate the technology could offer. ‘What are people going to do with more?’ asked BT to anyone who criticized.
Well no one knows what they’d do with more bandwidth until they’ve got it. Put in the pipe and it will be used. The PC industry has demonstrated that amply.
The fact that the concept of the ‘digital home’ is a long-off dream is directly due to the telecoms industry, Michael Dell, founder and chairman of Dell Computer, told the Consumer Electronics Show last week.
Dell said the lack of high-speed broadband to the home was to blame. “I challenge the telecom industry to accelerate fibre installation to the home”, he said.
Only 1 per cent of US homes with broadband have a fibre connection.
It’s just as bad in the UK where the drip drip approach of BT and the cable operators in offering a megabit/sec more every year is regarded as keeping up with the technology.
Dell is right. The people who have done more than anyone else on the planet to hold back technological advance are the fixed link telecoms industry.
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