Networking May Strengthen Post-Graduation Ties
As cramped and messy as it might be, the typical university dorm room has one huge advantage over the typical living room: bandwidth.
Campuses across the U.S. have gone on a wiring frenzy, extending their high-speed networks beyond computer labs and into residence halls. Casey Green, director of the Campus Computing Project, estimated that two-thirds of all dorm rooms on state university campuses have a fat pipe to the Internet, with an even higher percentage being wired at private universities and research institutions.
By comparison, less than 10% of U.S. homes have a cable modem, digital subscriber line or other “broadband” Internet connections, according to high-tech research firm Statistical Research Inc. And even those homes have a fraction of the bandwidth that college students enjoy.
The denizens of Holmes Hall at Michigan State University, for example, enjoy average speeds of about 12 megabits per second, which is 15 times faster than the best home Internet connection offered by Michigan’s largest phone company. They can download Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious” single in about 3 seconds, or an electronic copy of “The Silence of the Lambs” in less time than it takes to brew a cup of coffee.
The facilities at Holmes Hall might be advanced, but they’re hardly unique. Michigan State is one of 187 universities across the country in the Internet2 project, all of which have committed to providing ultra-high-speed Net connections throughout their campuses.
This kind of speed transforms the Net and the role it plays in consumers’ lives. And when they graduate, some observers say, students are going to want the same version of the Internet that they enjoyed on campus.
“Their expectations and their consumption behaviors are going to be established by the experience they have right now” in the dorms, said Steve Banfield, general manager of consumer products for RealNetworks Inc. “They’re going to be used to that, and they’re going to want that experience.”
That might be good news for high-speed Net providers, who’ve struggled as demand for DSL and cable modems has cooled. Entertainment companies might like to see more living rooms wired for broadband too because it would give them another way to distribute products.
The $64-billion question, though, is whether the new broadband generation will expect their online entertainment to be free. Thanks to online file-swapping services such as Napster and Gnutella, college campuses have been a hotbed for music and movie piracy. Will graduates expect to continue copying freely once they have broadband in their homes?
As chief executive of SightSound Technologies, which sells downloadable movies, Scott Sander has a dim view of the college market. “We have a completely wired, technologically savvy generation of young people on college campuses--and they’re largely broke, and they know how to steal everything,” Sander said.
Nevertheless, he remains hopeful that the piracy habits formed on campus won’t last beyond commencement ceremonies.
“They’re learning that this is the fastest, best, quickest way to get your entertainment. And our theory . . . is when they graduate, and they have real jobs and real income and real families and real kids, they’ll have to quit breaking the law because they’ll have something to lose.”
Andrew Schneider, a senior vice president at Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, argues that even college students are willing to pay for online entertainment, particularly if it’s interactive. Many of them plunk down $10 a month for Sony’s online game “EverQuest,” which has more than 400,000 subscribers. And college students will be a prime target for Sony’s Screenblast, a soon-to-be-released broadband audio and video service that plans to charge users for premium elements.
“This audience has grown up using interactive media in one form or another,” Schneider said, citing the prevalence of video games and home computers. “This is the right market to roll out interactive services to.”
Sander cautioned, though, that the new broadband generation won’t accept less from the Internet than consumers get from TV and the multiplex.
“When you get broadband, you get the biggest movies, the biggest stars, on demand,” Sander said. “The idea that it was going to be a different form of entertainment, that idea died on college campuses. . . . What they want is the biggest stars.”
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Times staff writer Jon Healey covers the convergence of entertainment and technology.
