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Do we really understand just how fast technology advances over time? And the magnitude of price changes and innovations it yields?

Especially in the realm of public policy, we often obsess over today’s seemingly intractable problems without realizing that technology and economic growth often show us a way out.

In several recent presentations in Atlanta and Seattle, I’ve sought to measure the growth of a key technological input — consumer bandwidth — and to show how the pace of technological change in other arenas is likely to continue remaking our world for the better . . . if we let it.

Bandwidth Boom – NARUC Seattle – Bret Swanson – 07.22.09

Over the July 4 weekend, relatives and friends kept asking me: Which mobile phone should I buy? There are so many choices.

I told them I love my iPhone, but all kinds of new devices from BlackBerries and Samsungs to Palm’s new Pre make strong showings, and the less well-known HTC, one of the biggest innovators of the last couple years, is churning out cool phones across the price-point and capability spectrum. Several days before, on Wednesday, July 1, I had made a mid-afternoon stop at the local Apple store. It was packed. A short line formed at the entrance where a salesperson was taking names on a clipboard. After 15 minutes of browsing, it was my turn to talk to a salesman, and I asked: “Why is the store so crowded? Some special event?”

“Nope,” he answered. “This is pretty normal for a Wednesday afternoon, especially since the iPhone 3G S release.” Read the rest of this entry »

See our new paper estimating the growth of consumer bandwidth – or our capacity to communicate – from 2000 to 2008. We found:

• – a huge 5,400% increase in residential bandwidth;
• – an astounding 54,200% boom in wireless bandwidth; and
• – an almost 100-fold increase in total consumer bandwidth

U.S. consumer bandwidth at the end of 2008 totaled more than 717 terabits per second, yielding, on a per capita basis, almost 2.4 megabits per second of communications power.

After the EU antitrust authority today leveled a €1.06 billion fine against Intel, the company’s general counsel Bruce Sewell gave an illuminating interview to CNBC:

We better come up with a better way to restrict the EU’s range of motion on these matters. Sewell called the action “arbitrary.” The CNBC reporters called it a “shakedown.” They’re both right. Read rest of post »

Last night on Charlie Rose, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner made an extraordinary admission. Here’s the exchange:

Rose: “Looking back, what are the mistakes, and what should you have done more of? Where were your instincts right but you didn’t go far enough?”

Geithner: “There were three broad types of errors in policy. One was that monetary policy here and around the world was too loose for too long.  And, that created just this huge boom in asset prices; money chasing risk; people trying to get a higher return; that was just overwhelmingly powerful.” 

Rose: “Money was too easy.”

Geithner: “Money was too easy, yeah . . . . Real interest rates were very low for a long period of time . . . .”

There you have it. Pretty simple. And yet it is the first time I can recall that any U.S. executive branch official, spanning the Bush and Obama Administrations, has admitted monetary policy was even one factor, let alone the central factor, leading to the crash. This is very big stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a photo of my father from around 1982, standing on the tarmac of South Bend airport with Jack Kemp. The economy was in the tank, and America’s world standing was uncertain. My Dad had gone to pick up Kemp, who was to speak at an event for his fellow Republican, Jack Hiler, who was our friend and congressman from northern Indiana. I was maybe eight years old at the time. We were Reagan-Kemp-Hiler conservatives, interested in entrepreneurship, economic growth, and a muscular but prudent international stance.

Some 15 years later I would go to work for Kemp as an economic analyst. It was not preordained, but neither was it a complete coincidence, I suppose, that I spent several years working for the man who, more than any other public official, had articulated and even helped shape my, and my family’s, worldview. Kemp and I even shared the same birthday, July 13.

It is difficult to overestimate Kemp’s impact on history. For those who don’t grasp the importance of economics in politics and geostrategy, that will seem a wild overstatement. But I do think Kemp changed the arc of human events by helping to launch the U.S. on a much higher growth trajectory. Read the rest of this post »

When Cablevision of New York announced this week it would begin offering broadband Internet service of 101 megabits per second for $99 per month, lots of people took notice. Which was the point.

Maybe the 101-megabit product is a good experiment. Maybe it will be successful. Maybe not. One hundred megabits per second is a lot, given today’s applications (and especially given cable’s broadcast tree-and-branch shared network topology). A hundred megabits, for example, could accommodate more than five fully uncompressed high-definition TV channels, or 10+ compressed HD streams. It’s difficult to imagine too many households finding a way today to consume that much bandwidth. Tomorrow is another question. The bottom line is that in addition to making a statement, Cablevision is probably mostly targeting the small business market with this product.

Far more perplexing than Cablevision’s strategy, however, was the reaction from groups like the reflexively critical Free Press:

We are encouraged by Cablevision’s plan to set a new high-speed bar of service for the cable industry. . . . this is a long overdue step in the right direction.

Free Press usually blasts any decision whatever by any network or media company. But by praising the 101-megabit experiment, Free Press is acknowledging the perfect legitimacy of charging variable prices for variable products. Pay more, get more. Pay less, get more affordably the type of service that will meet your needs the vast majority of the time. (more…)