New study quantifies the impact of broadband speed on GDP - Ericsson

A new report, conducted jointly by Ericsson, Arthur D. Little and Chalmers University of Technology in 33 OECD countries, quantifies the isolated impact of broadband speed, showing that doubling the broadband speed for an economy increases GDP by 0.3 percent.

Other studies, such as a 2009 study by the World Bank, suggest similar relationships.

A 0.3 percent GDP growth in the OECD region is equivalent to $126 billion. This corresponds to more than one seventh of the average annual OECD growth rate in the last decade.

The study also shows that additional doublings of speed can yield growth in excess of 0.3 percent (e.g. quadrupling of speed equals 0.6 percent GDP growth stimulus)

Both broadband availability and speed are strong drivers in an economy. Last year Ericsson and Arthur D. Little concluded that for every 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration, GDP increases by one percent.

Broadband impact on GDP

ADP Reveals Shocking Decade-Long Employment Data

Medium-sized businesses are back in hiring mode, according to ADP. That's the good news, since medium-sized businesses employ more Americans than big corporations and almost as many as small businesses. Nationally, these firms employ more than 42 million Americans, far more than large companies (17.8 million) and nearly as many as small businesses (48 million).

The bad news is that small businesses shed another 12,000 jobs and large businesses shed 19,000 in January 2010.

The really bad news is that over the last 10 years, according to ADP data, the United States actually has added no net new jobs.

In December 2000 there were 111.65 million U.S. employees working.

In January 2010 there were  108.14 million Americans working. From March 2007 to May 2008 U.S. employment was above the 115 million mark.

Overall, the economy still lost 22,000 jobs between December and January, according to the ADP report.

In May 2008 there were 115.2 million U.S. workers. That means the country must add back 7.1 million jobs to get back to where it was before the recent recession began.

One might argue that means 7.1 million U.S. families that are spending far less than they used to, on communications and all sorts of other things. But that completely understates the matter. Several hundred other million consumers have ratcheted their spending down as well.

All of that likely means several more years of slow economic growth, as consumers restructure their finances, government at all levels finds it simply cannot spend so much because the tax revenue isn't there, and the other long-term impact of unusual and unprecedented government indebtedness starts to be felt.

Some have argued that consumer behavior has permanently altered. One doesn't even have to go that far to predict a long, sluggish climb back up. Behavior now is constrained in real ways. It isn't a matter of permanently altered behavior but rather of sheer inability to behave otherwise.

The recovery has begun. The bad news is that it will be hard to see, and that there is no way to test the thesis of new consumer behavior patterns for some years, because it will take years before consumers really are free to choose.

Enterprise IM Shift: What to Do with the PBX?

Though we take it for granted that businesses "must" use a business phone system, that might be quite so true in just several years. In fact, Gartner predicts that by the end of 2011, IM will be the de facto tool for voice, video and text chat at the largest global enterprises.

Gartner estimates that 95 percent of workers in leading global organizations will be using IM as their primary interface for real-time communications by 2013. If that proves correct, we may now be witnessing the last wave of business phone system upgrades, as lucrative as the IP phone business, in its managed, hosted and premises-based incarnations, now appears to be.

There are other possible changes in store. Voice has been a one-to-one sort of communications pattern; mostly real time but with an ever-increasing asynchronous format. But with wikis, blogs, Plaxo, Facebook and other tools with a social and "push" updating capability, more forms of communication shift to a one-to-many, asynchronous mode.

One sort of "broadcasts" what one is doing, working on or needing help with, and the network just sort of responds as appropriate. Not good for control freaks, the ego-obsessed, the self-absorbed or mildly incompetent. People who are more respected, more trusted, more helpful, more knowledgeable and open will get more help than those who are in some significant ways "non-social." Winners and losers will be produced by the shift of communication modes.

As AOL's third IM survey shows, "everybody" now uses IM in their "consumer" life roles. The issue is how that will play out in the business context.

And though one might not yet see the change in the small business market, IM systems have moved from the fringe to become a key part of an enterprise’s collaboration infrastructure and increasingly are displacing existing forms of communications from ad hoc telephone calls and emails to pre-planned meetings and video conferences, says Gartner.

For many knowledge workers, instant messaging (IM) is as critical as having access to a telephone or to e-mail and enterprises that haven’t already done so should start incorporating IM into their critical business processes immediately, say analysts at Gartner.

“Although consumer IM use has been predominant in business, we expect penetration levels for enterprise grade IM to rise from around 25 percent currently to nearly 100 percent by the end of the decade,” said David Mario Smith, Gartner research analyst.

Practical Anthropology at Swisscom and Microsoft

An anthropologist at Microsoft points out that when instant messaging and other social networking tools are taken away from people (especially people under the age of 35), productivity drops. That's an indication that social networking is becoming a key problem solving tool, not a "time waster" as many managers seem to believe. Swisscom Innovations anthropologist Stefana Broadbent points out that use of written channels, ranging from IM to text messaging to email is growing, while voice growth has slowed where text communications are possible.

Broadbent theorizes that written channels allow constant interplay and availability without creating an information overload. A person without online social tools averages about 20 contacts with whom they keep in touch. A person with online tools can maintain 70 or more contacts, she notes. She theorizes that IM, for example, is both fast and non-committal, allowing a wider circle of contacts without overload.

That's an interesting perspective as more people start to worry we all are too connected, too much of the time. Broadbent argues that people should not have to unplug. In fact, she rhetorically asks, "why would I want to unplug?"

And she questions the notion that most people actually are overloaded with communication requests. "Most people we interview get five emails a day," says Broadbent. "They are thrilled to get one more friend on Facebook, for example."

Though the common perception is that most people are overloaded with communications, Broadbent says that isn't true. "Not many people are overloaded," she says.

"I'm opposed to the notion of unplugging," Broadbent says. "I don't want to lose my social intelligence network." To Broadbent, "IM is like bringing your dog to work."

Though I don't see lots of evidence that "always connected" behavior is all that important to most people over the age of 40 or so, I am beginning to see how most of the social networking tools can increase knowledge diffusion and make possible a wider degree of casual monitoring of one's environment. I wouldn't say I find it as helpful as RSS. But part of the reason is that most of the people I normally want to interact with do not seem to be heavy social networkers.