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Forgive me, but this sounds like the same perspective of the famous quote "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need on a computer" (no idea if Gates actua

Forgive me, but this sounds like the same perspective of the famous quote "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need on a computer" (no idea if Gates actually said it). People will always fill the bandwidth with something (just like memory), perhaps with something we don't even use today at all. Though note that the new usage pattern will only emerge after usage is ubiquitous, which is usually due to decent pricing.

waheoo 6y ago
Its also an American centric view. Travelling around Korea and back home I noticed the distinct difference in consumption habbits. Korea data isn't capped, so everyone streams news/twitch/YouTube while on there commute. Back home, everyone reads articles and spam scrolls static images on instagram. So "do people need bandwidth" no. Will they use it if they have it? Absolutely.
- arvinsim 6y ago
  Yeah, access to cheap fast bandwidth certainly changed my internet habits when I was in countries like Singapore and Taiwan.
  - waheoo 6y ago
    This what annoys me so much about politicians getting in the way of fast access internet due to their narrow minded view of the world where internet is for email and google. Expanding our capabilities always has unknown unknown benefits just around the corner.
tialaramex 6y ago
FWIW Gates never said that. There's no documentary evidence anywhere, it just shows up with no source as a claimed Gates quote years after the last point it could plausibly have been said. And the supposed ubiquity argument for more network bandwidth is stale. People have been making this argument for decades at this point, it's roughly the same age as "When everybody with a mobile phone gets cancer you'll see" arguments. Any time you think you see an exponential curve stretch off to infinity it just means you zoomed in too far. 16kbps was much too slow, and 16Mbps still feels a little cramped although everything works, but it turns out you have no real use for 16Gbps, even if most people you know have it too. I believe a lot of people got the wrong idea because for them two things came along together - they got more bandwidth and Always On access together, typically as DSL or a Cable Modem. I happen to have received them separately over time, partly a quirk of fate and partly because it had been very important to me to get access to the network long before most people knew it existed. Always On makes a huge qualitative difference. Broadband not so much. A household with Always On at 56kbps is very different from a traditional "dial-up" at 56kbps, in a way that one with 100Mbps vDSL isn't so different from one with 1Mbps ADSL or 1Gbps fibre-to-the-home. It changes how you think about using the Network, because it's always there.
- distances 6y ago
  > Always On makes a huge qualitative difference. Broadband not so much. I agree. My steps were dialup ISDN 64kbps -> always-on DSL 256kbps -> campus 100Mbps. Dialup to always-on was much, much bigger change than slow DSL to blazing fast campus speeds.
fomine3 6y ago
Finally 5G must be worth but whether buying 5G phone in 2020 is different question. Separat modem/SoC is not good for battery life. (yes I know iPhone does that ever but they do efficient things in different way)

waheoo 6y ago

Its also an American centric view. Travelling around Korea and back home I noticed the distinct difference in consumption habbits. Korea data isn't capped, so everyone streams news/twitch/YouTube while on there commute. Back home, everyone reads articles and spam scrolls static images on instagram. So "do people need bandwidth" no. Will they use it if they have it? Absolutely.

arvinsim 6y ago
Yeah, access to cheap fast bandwidth certainly changed my internet habits when I was in countries like Singapore and Taiwan.
- waheoo 6y ago
  This what annoys me so much about politicians getting in the way of fast access internet due to their narrow minded view of the world where internet is for email and google. Expanding our capabilities always has unknown unknown benefits just around the corner.

tialaramex 6y ago

FWIW Gates never said that. There's no documentary evidence anywhere, it just shows up with no source as a claimed Gates quote years after the last point it could plausibly have been said. And the supposed ubiquity argument for more network bandwidth is stale. People have been making this argument for decades at this point, it's roughly the same age as "When everybody with a mobile phone gets cancer you'll see" arguments. Any time you think you see an exponential curve stretch off to infinity it just means you zoomed in too far. 16kbps was much too slow, and 16Mbps still feels a little cramped although everything works, but it turns out you have no real use for 16Gbps, even if most people you know have it too. I believe a lot of people got the wrong idea because for them two things came along together - they got more bandwidth and Always On access together, typically as DSL or a Cable Modem. I happen to have received them separately over time, partly a quirk of fate and partly because it had been very important to me to get access to the network long before most people knew it existed. Always On makes a huge qualitative difference. Broadband not so much. A household with Always On at 56kbps is very different from a traditional "dial-up" at 56kbps, in a way that one with 100Mbps vDSL isn't so different from one with 1Mbps ADSL or 1Gbps fibre-to-the-home. It changes how you think about using the Network, because it's always there.

distances 6y ago
> Always On makes a huge qualitative difference. Broadband not so much. I agree. My steps were dialup ISDN 64kbps -> always-on DSL 256kbps -> campus 100Mbps. Dialup to always-on was much, much bigger change than slow DSL to blazing fast campus speeds.

fomine3 6y ago

Finally 5G must be worth but whether buying 5G phone in 2020 is different question. Separat modem/SoC is not good for battery life. (yes I know iPhone does that ever but they do efficient things in different way)