USB was developed at Intel and was popularized by Steve Jobs who introduced it to us in 1998. USB replaced a myriad of other connections, serial, parallel, Apple desktop bus etc.
Because USB was better, faster, more reliable and easier to use, it took over the computer world. There are more USB connections on my desktops than I care to count. Today a lot of people cannot remember life before USB.
Our company, WideOpen Blacksburg offers symmetric fiber Internet connectivity to customers in Blacksburg, Virginia. Fiber is better, faster, more secure, and easier for users. It is also competitively priced. Fiber, just like USB, will replace less technologically advanced Internet connections over the next ten years or so.
Most people living in towns like ours and most other small cities in the United States today have a home Internet connection. The Internet has woven its way deep into our lives.
If you do not have fiber, maybe you are wondering why symmetric fiber is such a big deal?
The early Internet just like electricity at the beginning of rural electrification had lots of promise but not all the tools needed to be useful. Just like it took years for people to accumulate all the appliances and useful machinery that would make life easier on the farm with electricity, it has taken years for us to go from one computer in a house where the Internet shared the phone line and typically was used only a couple of hours a day to our lives today which are intricately interwoven with the Internet. Typically dozens of devices in an average 2022 home depend on the Internet being on all the time.
WiFi was also important in making the Internet part of our lives. It did not get included with a laptop until 1999 when once again Steve Jobs moved us forward by demonstrating that you could connect to the Internet wirelessly. All of a sudden you could be in another room on another computer and also be on the Internet without running wires through your home.
The Internet also helped to quickly move us from Blockbuster and its VCRs with VHS to DVDs, Blu-ray and now streaming at resolutions that looked impossible twenty years ago. We have come to expect a seamless connection to the Internet. It is one of the things we need to live our lives. How we get the Internet at our homes has changed massively also and that change is getting up to warp speed.
Almost nine years ago in 2013, when I wrote an article, “Just How Bad Is Your Internet Connection,” our cable connection delivered 32.24 Mbps down and 5.49 Mbps up. When we moved in Feb. 2021, we were getting 484 down and 24 Mbps up. While it looks fast (and it could be argued those download speeds are fast), what it really shows is that our download speed increased to fifteen times what it had been nine years earlier. Sadly, our upload speed had NOT even gotten to five times what it was in 2013.
For users that work extensively in the “Cloud,” coax technology has been moving in the wrong direction. In defense of the cable industry, the technology to increase upload speeds with coax cables is difficult, might require huge equipment upgrades and will likely require tuning to achieve the best results. As is often the case with a technology like coax that is pushing its limits, users’ needs are growing faster in different directions (uploads) than coax cable technology can easily deliver today. The same thing happened in the music world and that push gave us first iTunes and then other streaming music platforms. Technological change can be unstoppable when the needs of users get out of sync with the capabilities that current technology can deliver. I well remember the lesson that consumers taught Apple about being late to the game with recordable CDs.
As many people learned during the pandemic, upload speeds matter and if you are sharing a connection with people in your own household and your household is also on shared bandwidth with your neighborhood instead of using fiber which provides more individual bandwidth, you can get frustrated. Work does not get completed on time, video conferences don’t go as planned and files, including homework ones might not get where they need to as quickly as possible.
When deciding to jump from one technology to another that is rapidly growing, the questions are pretty simple. Is the new technology proven technology? Is it really better technology? Is it reasonably priced? Will it provide my family with a better experience and have the capability to grow with our needs?
We helped build Danville, Virginia’s fiber network. It has been operational since 2008. That means fiber has been out of the early adopter phase for years. Fiber is the Internet’s backbone so it is a proven technology, now it is available at a competitive price for homeowners.
To quote the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “Meanwhile, fiber systems have at least a 10,000 (yes ten…thousand) fold advantage over cable systems in terms of raw bandwidth.” All that means is that there is plenty of proven technology to make your fiber connection even better next year or five years down the road.
I mentioned fiber is the “gold standard”of Internet connectivity. With more photos, videos, and other digital needs growing rapidly why wouldn’t you go for the gold and snatch some symmetrical upload speeds for your home?
We are really pleased with our symmetric Gig connection. We live in the country in a small rural county in North Carolina. If you don’t have access to fiber, maybe it is time to start asking why?
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