Nearly 70 percent of all respondents believe uninterrupted broadband access should be as readily available as other utilities like electricity and water, across all ages, race, income brackets and geographic lines, according to a new survey commissioned by SuperComm and conducted by Opinion Research Corporation.
A majority of respondents believe uninterrupted access is essential, while an overwhelming 75 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 want to see broadband available like other utility services.
Also, almost 80 percent of respondents in the same age group believe faster broadband speeds improve productivity at work.
The results, while hardly surprising, suggest some danger for communications service providers. Demand for broadband is nearly ubiquitous. But the analogy to electrictiy and water, both of which commonly are provided as regulated monopoly services, is potentially worrisome. That is the way the communications business has been viewed for most of its history, and there remains danger of a return to such thinking if service providers do not demonstrate that competition works better than regulation.
Most users do not remember what communications was like before the 1984 divestiture of AT&T. But low rates of innovation and high prices were facts of life back then. Matters arguably improved with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, though many might fault the results, or the amount of competition that was enabled.
Fortunately, we have benefitted from mobility, the Internet and broadband, which together arguably outweigh anything that has been done, or not done, on the telecom regulatory front. Nothing less than continued innovation and advances in consumer welfare will prevent some from attempting to turn back the clock.
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