subject: Now the broadband revolution is almost complete, how will it change our lives? posted: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 14:13:08 +0100
["You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one"
-- so said Lennon, and it's happening - no mention of the political
or environmental aspects of the "broadband revolution" but that's cos
this is from the business section. Not much on the the social
aspects either (YouTube users are termed "consumers") however some
good insight into the economic implications of a wired world. Plenty
of tips for makin' money. As a freelancing telecommuting outsourcer
who has the time to read the news at 2PM on a Thursday, I can say
this lifestyle rocks. Cheers.. ;) - Stu]
Hamish McRae: Now the broadband revolution is almost complete, how
will it change our lives?
What matters will be to use the capability of broadband to increase
productivity
Published: 24 August 2006
The broadband revolution is almost complete. According to figures
released yesterday by the Office of National Statistics, at the end
of June 72.6 per cent of UK internet connections were broadband. At
the present rate of new connections, the proportion will have risen
above the three-quarter mark some time this month.
So, over the past three years, the UK has gone from being
overwhelmingly dial-up to overwhelmingly broadband (see the pie
charts). But while this is an evident fact, it is much less evident
what the social and economic consequences of such a development will
be. How will we change our habits as consumers and how will our work
patterns change? And what are the implications for national
competitiveness?
As far as that last point is concerned, it is hard to get comparable
up-to-date statistics but the OECD numbers for the G7 to the middle
of last year are shown in the graph. As you can see, all the lines
are shooting up, but in recent months the UK has been creeping up the
league. With the surge over the past year we may now have caught up
with the US in terms of broadband penetration, though we are still
behind some of the smaller OECD countries such as the Netherlands,
Korea and the Scandinavian countries.
The implications for us as consumers are perhaps the easiest to
glimpse, for we are already in the early stages of migrating from the
TV set to the internet. Most people under the age of 55 now spend
more time on-line than they do watching TV. On Tuesday YouTube
announced that it was launching the first of its branded channels
carrying advertising material, with Warner Music to use it to promote
the debut album of Paris Hilton.
YouTube, in case you are not up to speed with such matters, started
just 18 months ago and has become the main site for people to put
their own videos on the web. Most of the stuff is home video quality -
simply a market place with hardly any quality control - so it is
intriguing that it should be chosen as the vehicle for this new
channel. This is the first time a new "TV channel" has been launched
on the net and it would have been completely impossible to do so
without near-universal access to broadband. Expect more examples in
the future.
But I think the impact of broadband on the consumer side of the
equation will be less significant than the impact on the producer
side. This is not just because most people now have as fast an
internet connection in the home as they do at the office, but also
because fast mobile internet connections are booming too. Both
Vodafone and T-Mobile are pushing mobile broadband, with the latter
starting a pre-pay mobile phone access service this month.
As with all new technologies the market will decide what it wants. I
personally find the idea of being able to flip on the laptop anywhere
very attractive but then as a writer this is a normal way of working.
But fortunately not everyone is a writer and it is important not to
generalise from one specific craft. There are and will remain many
work functions where physical proximity remains vital.
Nevertheless it is clear that we are in the very early stages of a
seismic shift. There are already several forces encouraging the
growth of people doing more of their work away from the office.
Some of these are obvious and have already been widely noted. These
include the growing use of part-timers and of older workers (with the
latter currently accounting for nearly half the increase in the UK
workforce). There seems also to have been a significant shift towards
greater use of freelancers and out-sourcing to small businesses,
though the figures are harder to find. We do know that in London and
the South-east teleworkers account for some 12 per cent of the
workforce, and that phenomenon occurred when most people were still
on dial-up. So expect the trend towards teleworking to speed up now
broadband is the norm.
What we don't know is how far the teleworking revolution will go,
just as we don't know how far outsourcing will go. We can be pretty
sure that the limits to teleworking will principally be social and
managerial rather than technical.
From an individual point of view it will be a question of whether
people work more efficiently - and enjoy it more - from a shared
central location, or whether the advantages of no commuting time and
home location offset the loss of social interaction.
From an employer's perspective it will be whether it works out
cheaper to run virtual offices than to run the real sort, whether the
quality of the output it higher, whether it is possible to manage
people you can't see - and so on.
The key thing to appreciate here is that we are still in the very
early stages of developing the new work patterns that will evolve
from the technical possibilities. We are still stuck with the idea of
a working week of 40 or whatever hours, with people being paid by
time rather than output. That will not change suddenly, but already a
lot of people are opting for more flexible terms of employment.
The more you can measure output the less you need to worry about
hours. So the present work contract, with people having specific
tasks to be performed at a specific place and with specific holiday
entitlement, will migrate to one that specifies the amount of work to
be done, the quality of it, and the time by which it has to be done.
Seen in factory terms this would be akin to a return to piece work
rather than time work, but of course the work now is white-collar
rather than blue-collar activity.
A move to a new piecework model would have a profound impact on the
relationship between employers and employees. It will be less
hierarchical. It will give more individuals a direct opportunity to
increase their earnings, something that happens to some extent at the
moment (for example through commission for sales staff). And it will
blur the distinction between employed and self-employed.
If all this is right, there will be implications for international
competitiveness. The more flexible a country is in creating new
employment relationships the better it will be at getting the most
out of the new technologies.
Ultimately what matters will be to use the capability of broadband to
increase productivity. Within five years countries will have near-
universal access to broadband. So what matters is not the technology
itself but how effectively it is used.
Up to now the US has proved the leader in applying new technology in
the workplace, while progress elsewhere has been disappointing. But
the US advances were principally applying IT in the business
environment, not exploiting universal broadband. The task for other
countries, including our own, will be to deploy the latter more
effectively to increase output - and improve lifestyles at the same
time.
