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Dave McClure, President, US
Internet Industry Association
 Broadband
Internet may well prove to be the most quickly-adopted
technology in the history of the world. Just four years
from now, according to The Strategis Group, broadband
connections will surpass dial-up modem access to the Internet.
But is this the beginning of the end for dial-up access
to the Internet? There are five compelling reasons to
think not.
The most stunning technology development of the latter
20th century came about because of a low pressure system
that swept across the plains of Canada and down the shore
line of Lake Michigan. It dumped snow on the city of Chicago,
canceling travel plans, paralyzing the city, and forcing
people such as Ward Christensen and Randy Suess to find
entertainment indoors for the long and windy weekend. |
Suess had
recently purchased one of the first asynchronous modems
for the PC made by the Hayes Semiconductor Products Company.
A paragraph in the device's simple instruction manual
noted that among the other things that could be done with
a modem was to set up a message board for a club or organization.
They had a club, for computing buffs, and decided to take
the manual at its word.
Christensen and Suess went to work, calling modem inventor
Dennis Hayes at home when they got stuck with a technical
issue. When the weekend was over, Christensen and Suess
had created the world's first online Service, the Chicago
CBBS. That service launched a hundred thousand bulletin
board systems and inspired the creation of CompuServe,
AOL, Prodigy, and MSN. It also made possible the launch
and success of the commercial Internet.
Christensen would go on to invent the X-modem protocol
that made simple file transfers possible. Hayes would
set the standard for asynchronous communications for every
modem that would follow for the next two decades and would
eventually be elected to the Smithsonian Institution's
Technology Hall of Fame. The bulletin board systems spawned
by the success of the Chicago CBBS would grow rapidly,
then die out in 1995—casualties of the explosion
of interest in the Internet and the World Wide Web.
Like the online systems and bulletin boards they made
possible, dial-up modem connections seem likely to be
the next major victims of the growth of the Internet.
Studies by the Strategis
Group, Jupiter Research, Excite@Home, and others all reach
the same conclusion: By 2005, the majority of Internet
users will be connected using a full-time, high-speed
broadband connection. That would make broadband, which
was virtually unknown just five years ago, one of the
most quickly-adopted consumer technologies in the history
of mankind—outpacing not only fire and the Gutenberg
printing press, but also electricity, the automobile,
television, and satellite TV...
[read
more...] |
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