The World’s Coming Broadband Divide

Several recent events pointed out how much business success, economic development and even international competition is starting to depend on once unimaginably fast Internet speeds:

1. Charter Communications announced that it would spend, in two separate deals, a combined $67.1 billion to buy Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable. A big reason for the deal was the opportunity to offer faster online services.
2. The Federal Communications Commission circulated a plan to include broadband in a $1.7 billion program that subsidizes landline and mobile phone services to 12 million low-income households in the United States.
3. Mary Meeker said that 34 percent of the work force in the United States, 53 million people, now consider themselves independent contractors, short-term hires or other kinds of freelancers. Of these, she said, two-thirds believe that the Internet makes it easier for them to find work, and 41 percent have done online projects.
4. Cisco Systems released its annual projections of Internet traffic over the next five years. Average speeds for standard landline networks, 21.8 mps in both North America and in Western Europe in 2014, will increase to over 40 mps in 2019, Cisco said. A big reason for the increase will be video.

The uneven global upgrades are not just a question of wealth. Eastern Europe already has wired speeds like its more-developed neighbors, and is projected to have the world’s fastest Wi-Fi and mobile networks. China’s fixed broadband speeds are expected to be faster than those in Spain, and just less than in Britain. And where that broadband gets upgraded, expect economic opportunity to follow.