CURING THE BANDWIDTH BLUES
I hate (not a very Seabury thing to say but bear with me) the way certain words worm their way into everyday speech.
As a writer I love to play with language, but some modern buzzwords bug me bigly. They’re like the clover in my lawn. Nothing wrong with clover, but I got a problem with it spreading where it doesn’t belong.
Call me an old grump, but I spent my first 60 years on this planet without everybody “leaning in” and “reaching out” and “circling back.” If I read or hear “curate” outside its proper context or “bespoke” in any context one more time, I will go full Tasmanian Devil – all of which brings me to the buzzword this post is about.
Bandwidth. Ugggh!
I don’t have bandwidth. You don’t have bandwidth. No human being has bandwidth. We have time. We have availability. We have capability. But we don’t have bandwidth.
Digital networks have bandwidth – the measure of their capacity to transfer data at a given speed. The problem today is that we are all spending more time online due to the coronavirus. And we’re devouring bandwidth like it was Pizza Friday.
When it comes to bandwidth, everybody is in the same boat as Oliver Twist: ”Please, sir, I want some more.”
We had a sense this was coming. Anticipating the possibility of starting school in distance learning mode, we decided to increase our bandwidth and make our network five times faster with even greater improvement to come.
We weren’t alone, though. Comcast is backed up like I-5 at rush hour. We’re still waiting to work our way to the top of their to-do list.
Our lack of additional bandwidth has already caused a hiccup or two in the run-up to the first day of school. We apologize and ask for your patience. We promise we’ll be up to speed before you can say “optics.”