释放高速互联网的潜能推进宽带需求的策略(英文版)(pdf36)简介开始
Nearly 60 percent of U.S. households have
a home computer, and of those, roughly
90 percent have some kind of Internet
access.2 Clearly, home computer owners find
Internet access to be valuable. However, despite
the fact that 70 percent of computer owners live
in an area that is served by at least one type of
brOAdband service, only about one-fifth choose
to subscribe to a high-speed service. As Table 1
shows, this gap between supply and demand is
likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
There are several reasons for this “demand
gap,” including dissatisfaction with brOAdband
service and difficulty of installation,3 but the
primary reason is the high cost relative to the
value. Many Internet users do not belIEve that
the things they can do with a brOAdband
connection are worth the expense of subscriBIng.
Most of the activitIEs people engage in when
connected to the Internet at home—email, online
shopping, checking sports scores, visiting chat
rooms—can be done with a low-speed connection.
There simply are not enough compelling highspeed
applications to justify upgrading the
connection.
Those who have chosen to get brOAdband
connections at home have telling differences in
their online behavior, as demonstrated in Table
2. Internet users perform common activitIEs with
roughly the same frequency whether using a
broadband or dial-up connection. BrOAdband
users, however, are far more likely to use the
Internet for telecommuting, distance learning, and
multimedia applications such as television,
movIEs, and music. These represent the pressure
points of brOAdband demand. By expanding these
kinds of offerings on the Internet, more users will
find the Internet valuable enough to justify
acquiring a brOAdband connection.4
All of these online applications of brOAdband
are “one-way” uses—that is, content or services
are pushed from a provider to the end user.6 As
more people adopt brOAdband connections,
however, the network effects will give rise to more
“two-way” utilitIEs. Just as fax machines became
more useful as more offices acquired fax
machines, brOAdband connections will become
more useful as more homes acquire brOAdband
connections. Exchanging high-quality digital
photos, live videoconferencing in place of
telephone calls, online gaming, and other uses will
expand as more people get connected. For the
immediate future, however, the focus should be
on the “one-way” services because they can be
deployed irrespective of the number of brOAdband
subscribers and therefore stimulate demand.
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