Forward thinking vs. keeping everything as it was

I ran across this quote from Steve Jobs, and while he was talking about technology devices, I think it applies to broadband and the eternal bandwidth debate as well:

“For something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

"....people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

Exactly. Asking people what they intend to do with a Gig of bandwidth sometime in the future is not likely to produce a lot of insight, and it will almost certainly "prove" a community does not need to be a "Gigabit City." If asked, most people today will say they are reasonably satisfied with the bandwidth they have TODAY, because that is the only context of their experience.

Jobs' comment reminded me of one of my favorite all time quotes that illustrates perfectly that nothing really changes. Asked about he came up with the concept of the "car," Henry Ford said:

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses.'"

We do broadband surveys regularly, and they can provide some very useful information, but they are just a momentary snapshot that tells you what people and businesses are doing NOW. They tell you very little about what those people and businesses may need in the future, because as both Jobs and Ford recognized, people are not very good at describing something they have never seen or used before.

I hear constantly now, "Why does anyone need a Gig of bandwidth?" The value of a Gig fiber connection is about the future, not the present. It is about preparing citizens, businesses, and the community to be able to compete for jobs and businesses over the next five to thirty years, with future-proof infrastructure that will support FUTURE needs.

If a community wants to stand still economically, then it can stay with its current copper-based telecom infrastructure, effectively freezing economic development at where it is today. But if the community wants to grow economically, retain businesses, create jobs, attract entrepreneurs, and bring new businesses, the Gigabit connection becomes a critical part of a forward-thinking economic development strategy.