Danilo Campos’ title is technical director for social impact at GibHub, but he spent part of last week in a different role: evangelist.
Speaking at the 2016 Broadband Tech Summit in Salt Lake City, Campos praised the benefits of high-speed Internet deployment and called for investment that will boost the lives of individuals and communities.
“Broadband is more than conduits or rights of way or optical fibers,” Campos said at the summit, presented by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and its Broadband Outreach Center, in partnership with the Salt Lake and Lehi chambers of commerce. “Broadband is an economic and civic imperative.”
Increased deployment will shrink the “digital divide” that exists between people with high-speed Internet access and those who do not, he said.
“We have to decide that this is a priority. We have to decide to make it possible for young people, no matter their ZIP code, to make their mark on the global map. We have to decide to prioritize helping parents afford the equipment and fees necessary to join the global community. We have to decide to make high-throughput connections the standard so families will not be left behind as Internet content grows richer and deeper.
“The communities who take this opportunity seriously stand to reap an exceptional harvest from their future.”
During his U.S. travels, he has seen the divide manifest itself: people crowd parking lots or find a perfect spot on a hill just to be able to get a good Internet signal from a hospital, library or fast-food restaurant.
“As time wears on, the costs of our digital divide grow more certain,” Campos said. “The basics of economic opportunity live online. Whether we are applying for jobs or school, more and more of our personal growth requires Internet literacy and access.”
People use the Internet, in part, to maintain distant family connections, make progress on schoolwork or unwind with good TV at the end of the day, he said. “The Internet has become an assumed part of a good life, but for too many it remains stubbornly difficult to embrace,” Campos said.
But when people are able to connect, “new opportunities emerge,” he said.
“As we expand the reach of high-speed Internet to more and more everyday lives, we lay the groundwork for all-new ways for people to connect. We may not even be able to conceive of them today,” he said.
But practical benefits from investing in the Internet already exist. Through the country, especially in rural America, an expanding Internet creates internal jobs in infrastructure, education and maintenance, but it also allows for telecommuting, and online education and access to global digital marketplaces “means that young people may be less-inclined to run off with their essential computer skills.” It also allows for local government to have less friction and provide services and information at lower costs, he added.
“There are whole new kinds of jobs that we can’t imagine, just waiting for us to lay enough fiber to make them possible. As virtual and augmented reality develop into serious computing platforms, wholenew means of collaboration, community, creativity and entertainment become possible.
“Perhaps the most exciting, a global-scale business can spring from any community where high-speed networking is easy to access. Remember how much information is exploding out there. Remember how much free code is waiting to be tapped. The ingredients for building technology companies have never been cheaper or more accessible.”
But for that to happen, more people need to be online, Campos said. “The world after the digital divide is filled with opportunity, expansion and transformation, and I think you’ll be surprised by people’s ingenuity, but it won’t happen for free.”
Mike Spaulding, vice president of engineering for the Mountain West region of Comcast, explained the need for faster broadband, citing statistics that indicate that consumers’ rate of data consumption is doubling every 18 months.
“The amount of traffic that is going across this network of ours and many others in the room here is absolutely astounding, so being able to innovate and provide more and more access and more speed is absolutely critical,” he said.
He, too, spoke of a widening digital divide and its consequences.
“The more people that are connected, the more it spurs innovation. The more access to information you have, and to be able to share that information. … the more innovation that will be created and the more growth and economic stability will be created in our economies and in our states. Investment has got to be there and it’s got to be systematic and it’s got to be reinforced over and over again,” he said.