According to the results of Akamai’s recently published State of the Internet report for Q4 2010, the average broadband connection speed for the U.S.was 5.1 Mbps, about one-third as fast as South Korea, the country with the world’s fastest average speed. Peak connection speeds were better for the U.S.– around 20.3 Mbps, but still only about 50% of the fastest speeds worldwide. This places the country behind at least 10 others in average connection speed. Does this make the U.S. less competitive in the global economy as a country?
It’s possible but only time will tell.
What do other counties do with their extra bandwidth?
In some places they play more online games … in others they telecommute more frequently … and in some areas they use their networks for more social services like telemedicine and remote learning.
As interesting as some of these applications are – they aren’t Earth-shattering, or fundamentally disruptive.
However, what if you changed the bandwidth status quo altogether, and increased this average bandwidth by an order of magnitude? Or two orders of magnitude? Or even more and made it symmetrical? What groundbreaking applications could you use then, and could they be disruptive?
This disruptive line of thought – an experiment in high capacity, low latency networks – is exactly what the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy had in mind when they started a program called U.S. Ignite aimed at creating a testbed among already deployed networks to test these questions.
Join the U.S. Ignite program
In a recent webinar, Calix customers got to see, first-hand, what this initiative entailed as White House staffers invited you to become a part of the U.S. Ignite program, working with major universities and other industry ecosystem partners to test new applications that take advantage of high capacity networks.
A number of our customers have already signed-up, but there is room for many more to participate. Some of the clear opportunities are:
- Potential for national exposure for your company and your community
- The opportunity to introduce new and potentially groundbreaking applications to your subscribers
- The opportunity to drive powerful new social initiatives in your community
- The furthering of national broadband policy and showing the government what is achievable through advanced broadband networks
Calix customers were specifically targeted by the White House because you represent the largest group of companies with networks capable of the required capacity to test these advanced applications. For those of you who have networks capable of participating in this initiative – what have you got to lose? This seems to be a great opportunity to truly explore the promise of gigabit speed, and potentially discover some disruptive applications for your network, as well as for the U.S. as a country. Throughout this week and next, we’ll be exploring what U.S. ignite could mean to you and I’d love to hear your feedback. To participate, leave me a comment or find out more on Calix’s U.S. Ignite and Broadband Initiatives webpage.
|
About the Author
Geoff Burke
Sr. Director, Corporate Marketing
Geoff has over 20 years of experience across a diverse range of high tech fields. Currently the Senior Director of Corporate Marketing at Calix, he is responsiblefor all corporate and field marketing activities. Prior to Calix, Geoff was Director of Marketing Services at Motorola/Next Level Communications, and has held senior marketing, strategy, and operational roles at The McKenna Group, KPMG Consulting (now BearingPoint), and Oracle Corporation. Geoff holds a Masters in Business Administration degree in Marketing and Strategy from the Anderson School at UCLA, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree from UCLA.
|
micah_ruge
on:
Photos from the Field: Tennessee & Florida
