US consumer bandwidth is booming, report says

“I think you are seeing on a number of fronts, whether it’s the Justice Department investigation, the NTIA’s new rules for broadband stimulus that include net neutrality provisions or much more comprehensive regulation that could come out of the FCC’s broadband review that will be completed next February that there is cause for concern,” Swanson said. “We need to stay on the very positive path we are on. Some big new regulatory scheme that came out of this year-long process, depending on what it is, could hamper innovation and investment. We need many tens of billions every year to deploy wireless broadband, new fiber optics, new computers and data centers all over the place to enable things like cloud computing, gaming and video and new things in health care IT and education.”

Swanson built his data beginning with FCC broadband numbers and expanding that via industry reports, discussions with industry companies and analysts and a variety of other sources. He looked at the services and devices deployed and the number of subscribers and capabilities to reach what he admits is an estimate of how much bandwidth is available at a given time.

“These are good estimates, but they are estimates using lots of data from lots of different sources,” Swanson said. “As I say in the report, these technologies are moving so fast that it is impossible to say at any exact moment how much bandwidth is being used, but I believe this report told a very accurate story over time about our bandwidth expansion.”