"Good Enough" Isn't Good Enough For America's Broadband Future

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[Commentary] The vast majority of today's Internet traffic is delivered on what's referred to as a "good enough" basis. As there are often many hops between where content or an application is hosted and the end user no one can guarantee service delivery, but since things generally work well enough to not be a nuisance, "good enough" delivery is good enough for most users and use cases. But this "good enough" mindset seems to have infected and shaped too many people's perceptions regarding the kind of broadband America needs, leading some to think thoughts like: 1) If we have adequate capacity to handle today's applications then what's the point of more bandwidth? What we have is good enough. 2) If speeds are getting higher and prices lower, regardless of how incrementally slow that progress is, then that's good enough. 3) If broadband providers advertise enough speed it doesn't matter if they can actually deliver it or if they're providing service of high reliability and low latency, promising adequate broadband is good enough. 4) If rural areas can get online at any speed than that's better than nothing and therefore good enough. But Daily rejects all of these notions as not good enough, as inadequate to support the goals of a country that throughout its history has always strove for greatness.


"Good Enough" Isn't Good Enough For America's Broadband Future