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You are hereWireless Broadband substitution is real
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2006-12-18 12:48
One of the comments my able debate opponent, Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, made last Friday stuck with me over the weekend as very much an "ostrich-head-in-the-sand" point of view. After I pointed out that prices were falling, consumer choice and speed were increasing, broadband investment and deployment are healthy, and that there was an explosion of innovation and new products... Gigi replied that ~98% of people access the Internet through their phone or cable company. (she ignored my comment that 8 sort years ago we had a monopoly) Then she sarcastically dismissed the possibility that wireless or other technologies could ever compete with phone or cable -- or that it would be a long time coming. Gigi is suffering from naysayers disease, if I don't see it today it cannot ever happen. The future will always be like the present or the past. (That certainly has not been true of the Internet) About one out of ten americans now have left their formerly monopoly phone service and now just have a wireless phone; its called wireless substitution Gigi, and the percentage is even higher among young people -- who are the future.
The problem with Gigi's view of the state of competition, is that the facts on the ground are only accumulating that competition is increasing and that consumers are increasingly getting more choices, faster speeds and lower prices.
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