The luxury connotation of advanced telecom -- why it’s still called “broadband.”

Three decades ago, the United States failed to put in place a transitional process to modernize twisted pair copper telephone infrastructure designed in the 20th century for analog voice telephone service to fiber for digital Internet protocol (IP) services that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It should have been seen as a natural evolution of telecommunications technology.

Instead, the legacy copper infrastructure was kept in place and advanced telecommunications was framed as an enhanced service under the name “broadband.” Basic service was dialup -- relatively inexpensive and affordable to most households and small businesses. By contrast, broadband was always on and allowed end users to access digital voice, web pages, images and video that dialup could not. That distinguished it a premium luxury service providing a far richer amount of information and content.

Broadband was a natural for Cable TV – an enhanced, premium service over television signals broadcast on the public airwaves. Cable companies got into the broadband business in a big way and are now the dominant providers of advanced telecommunications connectivity.

Hence, “broadband” connoted a luxury upgrade over narrowband dialup. As with any luxury, it comes at a price premium and is marketed to select households likely to upgrade. The more broadband, the higher the price.

The term “broadband” is so widely used today it’s become shorthand for advanced telecommunications capability. The luxury connotation has stuck. It’s fundamental to the challenges the nation faces with access and affordability now that advanced telecommunications like the voice telephone service before it has become a basic utility and not a luxury.

Francella Ochillo, Executive Director, Next Century Cities, reinforced the point at the annual Silicon Flatirons conference earlier this month:

“We could hide behind the internet's new and it's really a luxury. And it was really very strategic to even use that language to call it a luxury, because then it made it OK if everybody didn't have it. And I'm not saying that that's intentional. I'm saying that that's just real. And whether or not it's intentional, that was the impact. And so when we're in a moment where we have to start questioning structures, and thinking about why have we been doing it that way for that long.”

It was intentional however to the extent the framers of the 1996 Telecom Act also saw IP powered advanced telecommunications as new. Because it was novel, the thinking went, let’s keep policy technology neutral and see how market competition will evolve to deliver it to homes, schools and businesses. And not establish fiber to as the advanced telecommunications delivery infrastructure standard even though it predates the emergence of IP telecommunications by two decades.

Then as now, fiber was a proven technology for delivering advanced telecommunications services that wasn’t going to be obsoleted by another technology anytime soon. That’s seen in 2023 as public policymakers at all levels of government look to speed fiber connections to nearly every American doorstep, making them as ubiquitous as copper telephone line connections.