Some statements are true, but do not matter. So it is with the evergreen claim that the United States lags, or is behind, on some measure of information technology adoption. That was said about mobile phone adoption and text messaging adoption, for example. The statements also were “true” for a time.
These days, the best example is the oft-repeated argument that U.S. internet access speed is behind, or significantly behind, other nations, either in terms of fixed or mobile access.
The latest study to produce such evergreen assertions (it is hard to remember any time since the advent of high speed internet access when the statement has not been made) is Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report.
Although the lagging U.S. performance has been noted for fixed internet access, it also, according to Akamai data, pertains to U.S. mobile internet access speeds.
Those statements are true, but also do not matter. There are a couple of reasons. To my knowledge, the United States has never ranked at the top of any key measure of tele-density (voice adoption), mobile adoption, internet access speed or take rates.
In other words, U.S. consumers often (virtually always) have lagged behind consumers in other nations on measures of telecom service adoption, and U.S. providers often have lagged behind in terms of network performance.
And there are reasons for that situation, including large areas of very-low population density where any fixed network is unsustainable. The expense and time required to “wire” a continent-sized area also plays a role.
Also, although wide gaps historically have existed, those gaps always have closed fairly quickly. So the size of the gap, early on, is often quite large. There is no historical evidence that such gaps persist very long. The gap is going to close, and relatively quickly.
Beyond all those statistical measures, there is the matter of impact. Researchers have noted that for long periods of time, information technology investment has failed to produce measurable increases in productivity, for example.
So one way of looking at tele-density or IT intensity is to ascertain measurable impact. If high adoption does not appear to lead to commensurate economic advantage, one might question whether what we are measuring actually matters.
Few, if any observers would claim that “not at the top” U.S. adoption of any form of internet access prevents U.S. businesses and consumers from wringing benefit from the internet ecosystem. In other words, beyond a certain point, perhaps the state of infrastructure adoption is not key.
Other hard-to-measure or intangible elements determine how much effective use people and nations can wring from the internet ecosystem. In that sense, also, the gaps do not ultimately matter.
“The United States is the largest player in the global Internet supply ecosystem, capturing more than 30 percent of global Internet revenues and more than 40 percent of net income,” McKinsey analysts have said. “It is also the country with the most balanced structure within the global ecosystem among the 13 countries studied, garnering relatively equal contributions from hardware, software and services, and telecommunications.”
So yes, U.S. metrics for internet access does lag the very best level of performance globally. It does not matter.
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