Cuban: The Internet is ‘Dead and Boring’

Tech Maverick and Internet billionaire Mark Cuban has some choice words for would-be web entrepreneurs of today. Basically, don’t bother:

The internet of today versus what I suggested to the committee would happen if internet speeds to the home increased to 1 gigabyte per second, is like comparing the plane Orville and Wilbur Wright built in 1903 to a brand-new Boeing.

We have reached a point of diminishing returns with today’s internet. The speed of broadband to your home won’t increase much more in the next five years than it has in the last five years. That is not enough to work as a platform for new levels of applications that will require much, much higher levels of bandwidth.

Broadband to the home isn’t fast enough for downloads of movies at DVD quality to be ubiquitous. That means it’s no longer a platform for technological innovation.

Think of it this way. Way back when, electricity changed the world. It was the platform for everything electronic that we do today. Do you get excited about electricity or is it just a utility? Maybe old people who remember the advent of electricity still get excited about it. No one else does.

The internet is in the same position today. It’s no longer an exciting platform for societal and business change. It’s a utility. It’s something that is exciting to people who remember the old days of the internet.

So we’re stuck until we have high speed broadband across the country – how do we get there? I certainly hope we’re not relying on municipal governments to make it happen. In fact, scrapping the FCC would be a big step forward. Of course, less dramatic moves like cable franchise reform and staying away from so-called “net neutrality” regulation are good ideas too.