Better Living Through Telecommunications: The Social Rewards of Wireless Broadband

Few engineering books attempt to answer the big "so what?" of a technology. What is the social impact of 802.11 on society? The following sections point to a few social ills that can be cured by better living through telecommunications.

If It Hurts to Commute, Then Don't Commute

No traffic problems exist in the industrialized world. A large percentage of the drivers on the developed world's highways are driving to offices where they work on computers and telephones the majority of their workday. Are we to believe those in the Audis and Land Rovers do not have telephones and computers at home? Why do they clog highways to go somewhere to do something they could just as well do in their homes? Why are tax dollars consumed by their demand for highways, parking garages, and other wasteful forms of transportation infrastructure that only serve to breed more congestion?

The primary direct benefits of telecommuting occur from the reduction in travel required by the employee and the reduction in infrastructure costs at the office. However, a significant secondary benefit is the reduction in congestion costs. The Texas Transportation Institute's (TTI's) Urban Mobility Study reports estimates of the costs of traffic congestion in 68 urban areas.^[3] Its 2001 report states:

Congestion costs can be expressed in a lot of different factors, but they are all increasing. The total congestion "bill" for the 68 areas in 1999 came to $78 billion, which was the value of 4.5 billion hours of delay and 6.8 billion gallons of excess fuel consumed. To keep congestion from growing between 1998 and 1999 would have required 1,800 new lane-miles of freeway and 2,500 new lane-miles of streets-or-6.1 million new trips taken by either carpool or transit, or perhaps satisfied by some electronic means-or-some combination of these actions. These events did not happen, and congestion increased.

Analysis of the TTI report shows that 80 percent of these $78 billion in costs occurs in only 24 cities (comprising most of the larger cities in the United States), and 90 percent occurs in 36 cities. In Los Angeles, traffic congestion imposes estimated costs of $1,000 per person per year.

Various studies estimate that 20 to 40 percent of jobs permit telecommuting at least part of the time. If we assume that 30 percent of jobs permit telecommuting an average of 20 percent of the time (1 day per week or 50 days per year) and that the average commuter trip for a telecommuter is 20 minutes, then we can calculate the potential savings in travel costs and congestion. The savings in travel time are

(180 million civilian labor force) × (30% possible telecommuters) × (33 hours/year) × ($6.20/hour) = $11.1 billion per year

Similarly, the savings in travel costs are

(180 million civilian labor force) × (30% possible telecommuters) × (450 miles/year) × ($0.3/mile) = $7.3 billion per year

Summing up, the potential savings from telecommuting are $11.1 billion per year travel time for telecommuters, $7.3 billion per year for travel costs, and $4.7 billion per year for reduced (external) congestion costs, yielding a total savings of over $23 billion per year. Note that this is not an estimate of the savings from the accelerated deployment of broadband access; this is an estimate of the total transportation system savings from the widespread adoption of telecommuting. Assuming that these savings grow at a rate similar to the general growth rate we assume for the economy, these savings could be as much as $30 billion in 10 years.^[4]

Why do commuters persist in following an Industrial Age habit in the Information Age? Sadly, we have translated the drill press to the computer. Instead of a factory, we now have paperwork factories in the form of downtown office buildings and outlying office parks. If our white-collar workforce could only break out of their Industrial Age lockstep mentality and work at their homes or local teleworking centers, a meaningful percentage of our traffic would simply evaporate.

One objection to this solution is that white-collar workers need face-to-face contact to coordinate their work. True, but does it have to be exactly at 8 A.M. through 5 P.M. Monday through Friday? Wouldn't attendance at biweekly staff meetings suffice, the rest of the time being spent at home offices or teleworking centers closer to home?

Another objection is the need for socialization. First, one would speculate that if one's only friends are those in the office, that individual should work at "getting a life." Secondly, does that socialization have to be all day Monday through Friday? We can take our cue from America's first home workers: farmers. Much of rural day-to-day socialization evolves around a visit to a neighbor for coffee or a stop in the local cafe. This practice could be adapted in suburbia.

A more concrete objection, especially among high-tech workers, is the need for expensive computers with high-speed connections to the Internet. Many corporations who have weighed the cost per square foot of maintaining workspace in downtown office spaces or out at the local tech center found it cheaper to send their people home with that expensive computer and offer the employee a stipend for his or her home office. Competition to offer high-speed Internet access to the home by phone line, cable TV, or wireless would negate this Internet bandwidth objection.

So is there a high-tech, expensive solution for our so-called traffic problem that elected leaders can plan and impose over the next few decades? The best thing elected leaders can do is nothing. Once traffic becomes enough of a painful experience, those that don't have to brave traffic morning and night simply will not do so. They will stay home to do their work. They will slowly realize that the Information Age is driven by ideas. The formation of ideas is not limited to the hours 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. Nor are ideas limited to one place geographically, especially not a corporate cubicle. Perhaps we will ask that question from World War II gas-rationing pitches: "Is this trip really necessary?"

Concrete roads were first developed by the Romans to move their chief commodity, labor (soldiers and slaves), quickly and efficiently throughout the empire. In the Information Age, our chief commodity is ideas. Ideas don't need roads for their transportation. Ideas move well over fiber-optic cable, phone lines, coaxial cable TV cables, or even the airwaves. We must ask our leaders to compare the cost per mile of pavement (millions of dollars) to fiber-optic cable (approximately $25,000) or even wireless broadband. Its time to tell elected officials that they need to plan for the 2020s (the Information Superhighway), not the 1920s (the Lincoln Highway).

Affordable Housing Is Where You Find It

A societal ill dictates that good-paying jobs are only found in downtown high rises or in outlying office parks. As that is "where the money is," white-collar or Information Age workers strive to live within an easy commute of those offices. This in turn breeds congestion as everyone attempts to spend exactly the hours of 9 to 5 Monday through Friday in those offices.

Most government officials have not caught on to this yet, but new telecommunications technologies have largely negated the need for white-collar or Information Age workers to drive to an office. In the bad old days, there were factories. The machinery in a factory cost a lot of money. Workers had to go to the factories because that was where the jobs were. With the coming of computers and the Internet, white-collar and Information Age workers can work from their homes in the suburbs. As telecommunications improve in more rural areas, white-collar and Information Age workers can do their jobs from much farther afield and improve their net worth.

The average sale price of a single-family home in Denver, Colorado, at the time of this writing (spring 2003) is over $275,000. Sale prices of single-family homes in small-town Iowa, by contrast, hover at $30,000. Imagine a white-collar or Information Age worker making his or her big-city income in a low-cost area like small-town Iowa. The savings in mortgage payments are obvious. If one went over his or her monthly budget, other significant savings could be found in such a lifestyle change (telecommuters don't rack up as many miles on their cars). By saving as much as possible of that big-city income while living in a low-cost area, financial independence could be realized in a short period of time. Contrast that with the "I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go" consumptive/dependent lifestyle of the suburbanite.

Imagine a society where we didn't have to move every few years to stay competitive in our work. Imagine being able to stay in one place most of our working lives as our work was not dependent on relocating to another city to take another job with the subsequent loss of contact with friends and family. Information Age work is not dependent on working from a specific cubicle in a specific office building. It is dependent on having a consistent marketable skill. In theory, an Information Age worker should be able to change jobs or contracts repeatedly over a working life and never have to change residences. Imagine successive generations living under one roof. No mortgage, no moving expenses, no closing fees.

Family Values

Why are there latchkey children? The answer is simple: because some people think that the only place a job can be done is in a specific office at a specific time. Therefore, Mom and Dad must be at those specific places at those specific times, which leaves their children coming home from school to an empty house and, perhaps, trouble.

If it were better understood that most white-collar jobs could be performed from a home office, then moms and dads would not need to be absent when their children arrived home from school. Hence, social ills associated with absent parents would be greatly diminished.

^[3]The hourly value of $12.40 is used in the congestion analysis by the Texas Transportation Institute in its urban traffic studies discussed here. For more information, see the Texas Transportation Institute's "The 2001 Urban Mobility Report" (The Texas A&M University System, May 2001, http://mobility.tamu.edu/).

^[4]Robert Crandall and Charles Jackson, "The $500 Billion Opportunity: The Potential Economic Benefit of Widespread Diffusion of Broadband Internet Access," Washington, DC, July 2001, p. 37.