• by Jim Meskauskas , March 20, 2002

There once was a time when you couldn’t read any trade publication without coming across it. You couldn’t attend any conference or go to an industry shindig without hearing about it.

What folks were reading about, writing about, and talking about was Broadband.

Broadband was the panacea for all of what was wrong with the way online was going. Banners and tiles and other forms of flat-format creative were no longer capable of delivering on the early promises of response-driven advertising on the Web and something had to be done if the Web was going to become, and remain, a viable advertising medium. But talk never gave way to action. Broadband wasn’t readily available in most areas and the people in those areas didn’t really seem to care. So broadband faded into the background for a while, with pockets of early adopters signed on for Excite@Home and Road Runner, and advertisers worked on ways of making the existing infrastructure work better.

Talk of broadband is now back, and it’s a topic that is hotter than ever!

The talk now, though, is not so focused on how broadband will make advertising better, though that is still a position widely held and much talked about, but rather what will drive the adoption of broadband among the more general mass media consumer.

As it turns out, though technological and political barriers to broadband continue to come down, the desire for broadband in the home hasn’t been as great as the advocates had predicted or hoped.

So, what’s going to get the average Jane and Joe to sign up for broadband? It is a desire for broadcast-like content to be delivered to the desktop? Richer graphic experiences on their favorite websites?

One of the largest contributors to the growth of broadband is going to be the user's acclimation to higher-speed connections that they have experience with in the workplace. As more and more of the Internet audience experiences the Web from the work place, and the T-1 lines that more and more of them are going to have while at work, the more they will no longer be able to tolerate the glacial speeds of dial-up.

And I think eventually they will pay for it even if it is just for faster text. To the best of my knowledge, people aren't clamoring for the capability to watch movies and television-styled programming online. But they do like to get their email instantly and they don't like waiting a long time to download MP3s. They ARE NOT downloading episodes of 'Six Feet Under’ to a large enough degree to motivate conversion to broadband Internet access.

Right now the at-work audience is around 20% of the US population (the Dept. of Commerce report from Fall 2001 said it’s just about 19%). It is THAT group of people that is the bull’s-eye on the target for broadband.

The talk about what kind of content should be developed for broadband that would lure in more media consumers is somewhat a distraction from the more important consideration regarding broadband, which is what kind of content should be developed for the Internet.

If broadband is like gas, the Internet/Web is like a car. Most people don't care about the gas, as long as the car runs. If the better gas really makes the car run noticeably better, I'll pay more for it. If not, regular will do.

Any of you who have spent a few weeks accessing the Web via a broadband connection know how much better EVERYTHING about the experience is, from email to porn. Getting a free taste of what broadband is like at work is what’s going to get it sold into the population at large. People will weigh out in their minds what the value is of being able to go through their email 10 times faster than they are able to with dial-up and decide whether moving technologically onwards and upwards is for them.

And you know what? Most of them will opt for it. Just like we all did for subscription cable 20 years ago. American's will just "get used to it." It will move from the category of WANT and into the category of NEED.

And then the people will go for broadband.