Five faulty premises, part 2: Broadband’s overstated need for speed in education and health care

[Commentary] The idea that high-speed broadband is necessary for education, healthcare, and other social and government services is problematic both because it is factually inaccurate, and also because it is often used as a scare tactic. It creates a sense that the only way to support high-quality education, provide access to health care and employment opportunities, and address concerns about the digital divide is to support a specific broadband policy -- namely one of extensive government subsidies for high-speed broadband.

The first, most important response to this faulty premise is that high-speed broadband connectivity isn’t typically needed for education, health care, or other social services. It is especially true that the bandwidth sufficient for high-quality video streaming services -- a critical benchmark for most broadband advocates -- isn’t necessary for these services. This reveals another often overlooked aspect of broadband policy debates: bandwidth isn’t the only, and often isn’t the most important, metric. Latency (the time it takes a packet of data to traverse the network) and packet loss (the percentage of packets of data that never make it across the network) are incredibly important metrics, especially for applications in education and health care -- applications where the user may need to interact in real time with a teacher, classmates, or health care professional. It is important to distinguish between consumer-oriented Internet service and Internet service used by institutions such as schools and hospitals. There is a much stronger case for institutional access to high-speed Internet service. But speed -- especially “high-speed” -- isn’t the only or most important metric to consider when provisioning these services.

[Hurwitz is a visiting fellow at AEI's Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy]