Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear broadband, happy birthday to you
Last week marked the tenth anniversary of broadband Internet in the UK. Viewed by many as the single most significant invention of the century so far, broadband’s birthday attracted a great deal of attention; in fact Virgin Media (one of the broadband suppliers in the UK) announced that it has commissioned artwork to celebrate the anniversary in the form of a light installation made of the same material as fibre-based broadband.
As we celebrated ten years since its introduction, we were enveloped in a storm of media coverage analysing the impact it’s had on British society over the past decade – economically, politically and socially.
From the day of implementation, broadband changed consumers’ experience of the internet. It meant people could say goodbye to frustratingly slow dial-up connections which took ages for pages to load, drove up phone bills and used up phone lines.
Quickly though, its impact was felt on a larger scale.
Broadband internet enabled the birth and success of millions of start-ups and has provided additional revenue channels for established businesses. In making it easier and cheaper to consume and create content, broadband can take the credit for the birth of Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, for the success of Lastminute.com, LateRooms and LoveFilm, and for the invention of Skype, Spotify and Asos.
Then there are the socio-economic factors. Some credit broadband internet with driving political evolution, aiding modern democracy and facilitating free speech – in the past year alone, we’ve learnt much about the social and political situations in Iran and China through Twitter. In the UK, the issue of broadband internet has even become part of the campaigning parties’ election manifestos.
It’s become so widespread that there are large sectors of the population who simply wouldn’t recognise a dial-up Internet connection, by speed, sound or quality.
But let’s not get too carried away. As most of us celebrate ten years of the broadband revolution, the 20 residents of Clun Forest in South Shropshire face being disconnected from broadband as supplier QI Comm says it’s no longer economical. It seems that however far it’s come in the past decade, there might still be a little further for it to go.