Who needs a Gig at home? Half of U.S. businesses

This is 2007 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which reported that half of U.S. businesses are located in the home. Half, as in 50%. Which validates what I began saying ten years ago: Neighborhoods are business districts.

Communities that ignore this data and continue to hope that marginal DSL, asymmetric cable, and too-expensive cellular data services are "good enough" are closing off their own economic future.

The incumbents have cleverly turned broadband into an entirely pointless and futile debate about speed, when speed really has very little to do with it. Here's why:

• If you are building a fiber network today, it costs virtually nothing extra to provide a Gig connection to every home and business. Gig network gear is now priced to place everywhere. The telephone and cable companies continue to talk about Gig networks as some kind of hideously expensive, esoteric option. Amazon's Kindle Fire HD tablet costs more than the Gig box we use in our networks now, but no one says the Kindle table is too expensive.
• The incumbents slyly turn every discussion of bandwidth (which again, is mis-guided) into another pointless argument by claiming, "No one needs a Gig of Internet." Agreed! But we are talking about the size of the road, not the size of one truck that uses the road. Broadband is the road, and when we deliver a Gig on our networks, it is a Gig digital road to everyone's home and business. A package of Internet is just one "truck" that uses that road. Other "trucks" include business videoconferencing, access to the company VPN from home, large file transfers, and many other services (trucks).

The incumbents have been hugely successful with these two strategies of diverting the discussion to stuff that does not really matter. Instead of talking about the real issue, everyone ends up confused and frustrated with the misinformation.

I am reminded of a household study done in a rural county in the northeast about seven years ago. This was a very large, relatively isolated area, and it was the first time economic developers had ever polled households to see if there was any business activity in the home. They were shocked to discover more than 400 businesses that had never appeared on their radar. And I continue to see that today, with a continued over-emphasis on industrial parks, retail, and other traditional lines of business. It's not that those should be neglected, but with small and start-up businesses adding most new jobs.....neighborhoods and rural roads are business districts that need time, attention, and support from economic developers and community leaders.