Telepocalypse

Funny money

Lunch break time. I liked this entry on social benefits of broadband over at the Technology Liberation Front (and I thought I had a good blog name…).

Money quote:

The New Milenium Research Council today released a study on the benefits of broadband, which finds almost $1 trillion in benefits related to elderly and disabled Americans alone.

Even if their counting is off by an order of magnitude, it’s a lot of money. I’ve often said that the future route to success in network operation is innovation in finance — i.e. pricing, ownership, funding. The above echoes what I heard over at Citynet. Why is the City of Amterdam taking a 1/3 stake in their muni fiber network? One reason is that you don’t need to keep grandma at home and out of the residential care for more than a few days to pay for your videolink.

Find the beneficiaries of the network, and tap them for the cash. Just don’t necessarily expect the beneficiaries to be the same as the users, and for heavens sake get away from the horrific marketing, billing and support costs of traditional network sales.