Andrea Di MaioFor those who have been in this business for a while, calls for the deployment of telecommunication infrastructures as a foundation for the so-called “information society” are not new. Several cities, counties, regions have invested substantial amounts of money in deploying infrastructure that is either operated by private enterprises or by government-owned ones. Almost inevitably the early plans for e-government and information society in the late nineties were fraught with business cases for infrastructure investments.
After that, around the mid of this decade, we have seen a surge of interest for government-funded wireless infrastructures. Some cities have implemented these, either with own resources or relying on public-private partnerships. However these cities are in a minority, as the actual business case for a complete government-funded wi-fi coverage in urban areas is often far from being very clear.
Over the last year, due the economic recession, infrastructure investments have become popular again, both at the city and at the national level. What drives these calls is often a genuine desire for reaching out to parts of the population which are digitally excluded (e.g Australia) or to modernize historical icons (e.g. Venice).
There seems to be a great enthusiasm today and almost a religious fervor supporting more investments to give high speed broadband access to everybody, and very few questions about whether this has such a high priority as many think.
Case in point, the debate is very hot in Italy, where the national government apparently promised 800 million euro for broadband deployment, but such spending item did not make the cut in next year’s budget. At the same time, another debate is storming the financial capital (Milan), which is going to host the EXPO in 2015, to push for a free-for-all WiFi access. Bloggers, communities, journalists use sentences as strong as “free WiFi is a basic human right”. To those who try to show them that Internet access in the city is pretty high, the reply is that more bandwidth is needed to unleash the power of information. Incidentally Italy is only one example, but this is a common trend.
My position about this is that whether more broadband or free WiFi are required depends on what other priorities for investment are. Is such an infrastructure going to be a component of a smart city strategy, where environmental monitoring, traffic management, smart electric grid all concur to bring the city to the next level? Is there a plan to improve the quality of education or health care or to help better deal with integration issues coming from largely uncontrolled immigration? The problem is that today like 15 years ago, the assumption is that “if you build it, they will come”.
Are we sure? The way many people use high-bandwidth Internet access do today is to access entertainment (including illegal downloading of music and movies or to use VOIP services like Skype to slash their telephone costs. Browsing the Internet for textual content, as well as a fair amount of social networking (where it is not terribly video-intensive) does not require very high-bandwidth, so there is probably still a fair amount of value that people can get from existing infrastructures, if they were just encouraged or educated to do so.
I am all for ultrafast, as-free-as-possible access with significant government investment, if this comes together with serious investments in education (at all levels), healthcare (telemedicine), public safety (web-based CCVT), traffic management (more intelligent road charging schemes), environmental sustainability (web-enabled air and water quality monitoring). One way of justifying a free-for-all WiFi is to figure out how government operations could benefit from it: would a sufficient number of social workers be mobilized? would a sufficient number of teachers be able to overcome the limitations caused by insufficient or poor-quality physical infrastructures (school building, laboratories, etc)?
It is not good enough to ask governments to release the string of their purse without asking them to articulate convincing business cases about how they (and not only “the citizen”) plan to use more broadband.
Category: e-government Tags: broadband, information society, Italy
9 responses so far ↓
1 Tweets that mention Broadband for All May Not Be as Urgent as Many Say -- Topsy.com November 29, 2009 at 3:04 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brian Ahier, Andrea DiMaio. Andrea DiMaio said: Broadband for All May Not Be as Urgent as Many Say – http://bit.ly/8T3HtP #gov20 #egov2009 [...]
2 Nick Jones November 29, 2009 at 4:35 am
I sometimes feel that “broadband for all” initiatives from government are often rooted in a political misunderstanding of the nature of an information society. I suspect many non-technical politicians think that broadband is like roads. The infrastructure for exploiting roads already exists (cars, trucks, logistic distribution centres) and so on. So if you build more roads, or better roads they will immediately be exploited in ways you already understand.
But broadband isn’t like that; we are still in the process of discovering exactly what terms like “information society” actually mean. So just providing more broadband or faster broadband will not alone create an information society. Worse, because we don’t yet know what other infrastructure and services will be required to achieve this mythical “information society” government can’t even invest to provide the missing pieces to complement the broadband. Don’t get me wrong, better and faster broadband is a necessary foundation, but governments shouldn’t delude themselves that they know what it’s a foundation for.
3 Flemming Engstrøm November 29, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I think that the emphasis on building infrastructure is stil important since this is the a basis for all digital communication.
“If you build it, they will come” may not always be true but i’m sure that the negation “if you Don’t build it, thet will not come” is very true.
On the other hand I agree that there should be more emphasis on putting non-entertainment functionality into the infrastructure. Building digital services should be as important as building the infrastructure.
This will happen, the development of theses type of services comes slower, much slower than the entertainment-services. But when they emerge they will use the infrastructure and they will use the experience and knowledge from those who build the entertainmentservices.
I have been working with public IT for more than 20 years and the delvelopment of it-services during the last 5 years has been incredible, maybe 200 percent more that the 15 early years. I still feel we are moving slowly and I wish I could give a big burst.But thats not have it works, i t takes time. You can build a new service very fast, but the implementation will take time.
BUt they won’t come if we don’t take good care of the network. The infrastructure must be agile and ready, not old and inadequate
4 Think eGov » Blog Archive » Infrastructure versus services? November 29, 2009 at 12:30 pm
[...] versus services? 29 November 2009 1 views No Comment “Broadband for All May Not Be as Urgent as Many Say” says analyst at Gartner Andrea DiMaio. He argues that investments in services should follow [...]
5 Graham Colclough November 29, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Like transport in cities. The better the roads, the more we’ll just fill them. And it will be much worse with the information highways. Free is the the answer. It’s the subtleties of incentives, constraints on use, and different commercial and pricing models that we need to focus on.
I’m not sure too many places have managed to get properly into that debate.
6 Chris Parente November 30, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Interesting post. I follow the logic of your argument, but do you realize what you’ve outlined is the antithesis to how the Internet has developed?
The Internet grew first, and then people and companies figured out what new applications and business models it enabled. Facebook is five years old, Google less than ten. Citizens can’t be told how to use added bandwidth — they have to want to. And to ask government to design new uses is a stretch — not because the people lack initiative or intelligence, but due to a very risk averse culture.
7 The Daily Digest 12_2_09 | Navarrow Wright December 2, 2009 at 12:18 pm
[...] Then of course after you read this article you may be surprised to know that there are people out there who don’t think this is important. I think the broadband naysayers are those who only look at the implementation costs and not the opportunity or the people who stand to benefit from broadband’s use. Take a read http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio/2009/11/29/broadband-for-all-may-not-be-as-urgent-as-many-say... [...]
8 Sir Gershon and His Reviews: Good but not Great December 3, 2009 at 2:29 am
[...] As in Australia investments in broadband will exceed Gershon savings by a factor of 20 to 30, and nobody really knows how beneficial those will be, this casts doubt about how “efficiency” and “effectiveness” ought to be measured. [...]
9 Broadband for All « Doug Neeper's Blog December 6, 2009 at 2:07 pm
[...] Broadband for All May Not Be as Urgent as Many Say November 29th, 2009 by Andrea Dimaio – A Gartner Blog http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio/2009/11/29/broadband-for-all-may-not-be-as-urgent-as-many-say... [...]