[Podcast] The "Great Connecting" Continues with Jim Cashel
In this episode of the Cohere podcast, Bill and Lauren speak with returning guest Jim Cashel about the progress of the "Great Connecting" - the global rollout of broadband Internet - during the COVID19 pandemic.
The conversation covers a wide range of topics, including the role of the Internet during COVID lockdowns, having our realities largely mediated via screens and networks, the state of wireless and satellite broadband technologies, public policy surrounding Internet access, and much more. Overall, Jim remains optimistic about the possibilities being created as more and more of the globe comes online - in particular, opportunities for education and learning
Jim is the Chairman of Forum One Communications, a former recent Visiting Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and author of the book, “The Great Connecting: The Emergence of Global Broadband, and How That Changes Everything”.
Key Quotes from the episode:
“About 50% of people have broadband access - a little less than that around the world don't, so there's still billions of people that have had to, and continue to try to traverse the pandemic, without access to the tools that you and I take for granted.”
“So, as of 18 months ago, as I mentioned, about half of the planet had broadband access about half of the planet didn't and there were a handful of competing technologies that were vying to extend broadband to hard to reach areas around the planet. Some people were experimenting with high altitude drones. Some people were experimenting with high-altitude balloons. There were a number of companies that were working with new low earth orbit satellite constellations. Now, 18 months later, I would say that this horse race has pretty much claimed a winner, which is that the satellites have really been taking off, particularly this one network, run by SpaceX, called Starlink.”
“We also see that with connectivity comes fraud, fake news, and election tampering in developing countries. There's often major problems with violence, propagated through online rumor. So, there's definitely a downside as well. If anything, however, I would say the pandemic in all countries - our country and developing countries - has highlighted that there are advantages to having connectivity. If you just look at schools alone, those students with good connectivity in our country and elsewhere, were able to move online to not an ideal situation, but at least it was tolerable. If you don't have connectivity, then you have no options.”
“It's really important to link schools because students can learn quickly and education and schools tend to not be politically controversial and they're often the anchors in their community ...So there's a lot of really smart reasons to focus on schools and that's progressing, but not as quickly as it should.”
“I'm actually concerned that Starlink is going to find itself in a position where they're going to have sort of a Facebook moment - Causing all sorts of secondary problems that they had no idea were coming and really institutionally not being prepared for them at all.”
“We've learned a lot in this country. We've learned a lot as the Internet has rolled out in developing countries. And in general, it's a good story. It's something that we can be happy about - a few billion people are about to join the rest of us in a meaningful way for the first time. Uh, and that's, you know, millions of new students, businesses, business opportunities, and new Einsteins coming online. But we need to be smart about this, and I think we should be smart about it at this point, since we've had almost 40 years of the Internet rolling out in society and we should be able to take the lessons from that.”
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