David Isenberg Explains Why I've Always Called It Broadband Wireless INTERNET Access

David Isenberg is a must-read for me - he's one of the five or so "read whatever he writes, whenever he writes, right away" people that I follow.

So I saw his talk / article this morning, and it really resonated (more than usual).

Broadband without Internet ain't worth squat is a great explanation, and validation, of why I've always called what I follow and write about...

Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA).

Most others call it Broadband Wireless Access (BWA). Others call it Wireless Broadband.

But from the beginning, I've called it Broadband Wireless Internet Access, because I think all four words are required to explain exactly what it is I'm talking about.

Broadband - has to be fast, otherwise it doesn't do much for you. Slow Wireless Internet Access is better than nothing... OK for email, but that's about it. You simply can't do very much with slow Internet Access these days - Google's Gmail wouldn't work, for example.

Wireless - there's a lot of situations where wireless makes a huge difference in "routing around" the unavailability of wired Broadband Internet Access, the unaffordability of wired Broadband Internet Access, or just basic reliability other issues... like when your wired Broadband Internet Access provider(s) decide to charge you userious rates for (gasp!) actually using your wired Broadband Internet Access account for completely legal things like downloading High Definition (HD) movies from Netflix or iTunes.

Internet - Isenberg makes this point very well:

In the big picture, We're building interconnectedness. We're connecting every person on this planet with every other person. We're creating new ways to share experience. We're building new ways for buyers to find sellers, for manufacturers to find raw materials, for innovators to rub up against new ideas. We're creating a new means to distribute our small planet's limited resources. 

Put another way, if the Broadband (whatever medium) Access isn't Internet... it doesn't matter. Isenberg doesn't make reference as to why a lot of promising vital services went down to ruin, like AOL, Compu$erve, The Source, MCI Mail, even a favorite example of mine, PC Mag Net... they were closed ecosystems that ultimately paled in comparison to the riches of information available on the Internet.

Access - In the end, it matters that you can get to it by ordinary people. In my mind, that definition excluded things like backhaul, Intranets, etc. but I've since concluded that backhaul and Intranets are valuable for ordinary people, so my definition of Access has expaned to encompass backhaul and Intranets.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2009 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).