In the mainstream media, there is still far too much rubbish, lies and misinformation about technology. Too many pundits who fail to question what they are being told.

There was a classic example on Radio 4′s Today Programme  - a discussion on why 3G service in the UK is so disappointing and patchy. While Peter Cochrane, one time CTO of BT, did make the occassional relevant point, such as why O2 has a poor network***, he also blamed poor 3G network coverage on clustering. Apparently kids sit around coffee shops, simultaneously watching the same video on their individual mobiles. This, apparently, is the reason for our collectively poor service experience. I’ll leave you to make your own conclusions about that. Check out the interview here at 7:13 on Friday 15 Jan: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm

But it got me thinking about all the recieved wisdom about technology, all the rubbish masquerading as fact.

One of those is country league tables for broadband speeds. It may be interesting to know where the UK is – 26th apparently – but does this mean that we are really way down the list of broadband competitiveness, or indeed if broadband competitiveness has any baring on the digital economy? Does the relative position of where we a country is in the league table mean that somehow that its internet users are less evolved, that with 5mbps they do not operate on the same level of conciousness of citizens graced by 50mbps? Or does it mean that those with higher speed, more reliable connections simply are recipients of even more mass media channelled downwards through these fat pipes.

I love my fast broadband, I genuinely like the experience of BT Vision’s IPTV, and I regularly use BBC iPlayer and download games to my PS3, I use Spotify and spend huge sums on TV and music on iTunes. But will i be disappointed if in two or three years this isn’t a 50mbps or 1gbps connection?

My current 16mbps pipe is a conduit to mass media. Of course, that’s not so say that my internet experience is limited to this – quite the contrary, much of my working life is spent researching online, and I buy online in preference to visiting stores – but this does not need require a constant race for increased broadband access speeds. The impact of high speeds means that much of my Internet experience is now a sit-back rather than sit-forward experience. I watch, listen and play much more now than read and browse. Any rich media I want, it’s on demand. And i can’t help thinking its a little addictive, and that i’m spending less time discovering and learning. So tell me now – what does broadband competiveness means to the digital economy? It means more supine people, able to consume media in more ways, more often. Hardly enlightened! So why do writers, consultants and politicians continue to bang on about the need for broadband competitiveness without thinking about what it means?

Footnote:

***O2′s lower GSM spectrum band – 900Mhz – means it had quite large cell sizes originally. The high spectrum of 3G – 2100Mhz – needs smaller cells sizes, and therefore more of them. O2 is still in the process of trying to acquire additional cell sites rather than using just the GSM sites it already has, a process known as infill. This may have been fine if it wasnt for the boom in mobile apps and content created by the iPhone, which has taken O2 by surprise. The shear volume of data traffic generated by apps and content has highlighted another weak point – backhaul. Even when there is sufficient wireless capacity, many cell sites do not have sufficient capacity to bring the traffic back to the core network. That’s why as an iPhone user you are offered free access to BT Openzones – its cheaper for O2 in the short term to pay BT to backhual its apps and content over WiFi. More backhaul is being provisioning but at the moment, it can’t keep pace with demand.