http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/the-world-according-to/2007/08/23/Mark-Cuban
Lloyd Grove: As recently as May 2007, you told the House
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet that
government policy could encourage internet providers to make
the necessary investment in fiber optics to significantly
increase bandwidth to home users, in line with
industrialized nations such as Japan, Germany, and South
Korea, and that the economic benefits would eventually
outweigh the costs. But last month, you declared: The
internet is dead. Its over. You said its for old people
and its a stagnant consumer platform. Did you change your
mind between May and July? Who or what killed the internet?
And arent you biting the hand that fed you?
Mark Cuban: The internet of today versus what I suggested to
the committee would happen if internet speeds to the home
increased to 1 gigabyte per second, is like comparing the
plane Orville and Wilbur Wright built in 1903 to a brand-new
Boeing.
We have reached a point of diminishing returns with todays
internet. The speed of broadband to your home wont increase
much more in the next five years than it has in the last
five years. That is not enough to work as a platform for new
levels of applications that will require much, much higher
levels of bandwidth.
Broadband to the home isnt fast enough for downloads of
movies at DVD quality to be ubiquitous. That means its no
longer a platform for technological innovation.
Think of it this way. Way back when, electricity changed the
world. It was the platform for everything electronic that we
do today. Do you get excited about electricity or is it just
a utility? Maybe old people who remember the advent of
electricity still get excited about it. No one else does.
The internet is in the same position today. Its no longer
an exciting platform for societal and business change. Its
a utility. Its something that is exciting to people who
remember the old days of the internet.
The only way to change that is to upgrade the platform for
bandwidth transport across the country to a minimum of 1
gigabyte per second throughout to every home. At that point
kids will come up with new and unique applications that we
cant imagine today. Thats when it becomes exciting. Until
then, its dead and boring.
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