ENTROPY ECONOMICS

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GLOBAL INNOVATION + TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

Bandwidth Boom: Measuring U.S. Communications

Capacity from 2000 to 2008
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY > June 24, 2009
_________________________________
• The average Americanʼs personal
communications power grew almost 100-fold
over the last eight years.
• Contrary to dismal assertions of a digital Dark
Age, the first generations of real broadband
enabled a new boom in digital applications that
spread widely to consumers in the home and on
the go.
• Mooreʼs law, combined with smarter regulatory
policies and big infrastructure investments,
yielded dramatic gains in consumer bandwidth
and the diversity of communications channels.
• Mobile phone and wireless bandwidth grew
fastest, leaping 500-fold.
Over the eight-year period from 2000 to 2008:
• Total residential bandwidth grew 54x.
• Total wireless bandwidth grew 542x.
• Total consumer bandwidth grew 91x.
• Residential bandwidth per capita grew 50x.
• Wireless bandwidth per capita grew 499x.
• Total consumer bandwidth per capita grew 84x,
for a compound annual growth rate of 74%.
• Nominal U.S. info-tech investment totaled some
$3.5 trillion.
Looking forward:
• New applications like real-time interactive video
and a projected 66-fold explosion in mobile data
by 2013 will require continued large
investments in broadband networks and related
communications infrastructure.
• Pro-investment policies are needed to (1)
deliver more bandwidth to ever more
consumers and to enlarge geographic coverage
areas; (2) drive new innovations in crucial
sectors like education and health care; and (3)
accommodate rapid data traffic growth with
ever-greater real-time latency and quality-of-
service requirements. EE

Total U.S. Consumer Bandwidth U.S. Consumer Bandwidth Per Capita

800000 2500

700000
2000
gigabits per second

kilobits per second

600000

500000 1500 residential + wireless

400000

300000 1000

200000 residential
+ 500
100000 wireless
0 0
00 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
20 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

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