The implementation of a “true” broadband infrastructure could
help advanced countries add sizeable incremental growth to their
Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to a research by Gartner
Dataquest, a unit of research firm Gartner. It estimates this
incremental increase as $500 billion annually for the next ten
years.
The research firm defines “true” broadband as broadband to the
home with aggregate downstream capability of a minimum of 10
megabytes, in contrast with “the typical 384 kilobytes downstream
that service providers offer today.”
Gartner Dataquest said it used the International
Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) historical tracking of the
relationship between the GDP per capita and telephone penetration
in each country, and applied the same correlation principle of
“teledensity” and GDP per capita to create a broadband model.
It claims that the development of broadband at 10
megabyte-connections to the consumer would create significant
growth in goods and services.
According to Gartner, however, this growth could only be created
by the development of a new network, which would demand “continuous
upgrade of communications equipment, driving years of growth in
user devices as well as network hardware.”
Gartner added that, while the rewards of a true broadband
environment are substantial, its development would require
“enormous investment” and “the physical deployment would take
years.”
