🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2025-01-02
Reflecting on my telecom career, I explore the evolution of broadband and the ongoing digital divide.
Long ago in the late 1990s, I was deeply involved in telecommunications. Specifically, this was my early career working with Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
At that time, facilities based broadband providers were just beginning to take hold in the United States. The shift from dialup to ISDN to DSL, Cable, and Fixed Wireless broadband was amazing.
Of course, open competition in the market is a big part of what made business in the United States successful. By 2005, the term “Net Neutrality” came into the lexicon.
https://www.techdirt.com/2005/10/28/network-neutrality-wouldnt-matter-if-there-was-real-competition/
Of course, the United States is a big place and a really young experiment as nation go. So, getting broadband everywhere was a very big deal and it was often a story of a digital divide — and it still is even in 2025.
As my career in telecom progressed, I came to appreciate how essential broadband would be and how stark the differences are for those without access to broadband. And now, the early attempts at eliminating aspects of the digital divide will need to modernize as laws of the land in the United States.
https://www.techmeme.com/250102/p17#a250102p17
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