Boiling it all down to bandwidth is over simplifying. The point is that desktop applications cost a lot. They cost a lot to deploy, administer, and maintain. At some point, that cost is too high relative to the quality of apps you can get offline. Having a fast network connection plays a role in that, but it isn’t the only factor.

Even if broadband does tail off; enough consumers in the US have it now that web-based apps could take off. Once they do, if non-broadband users are unable to share in those apps, the apps themselves will become incentives to pull those non-broadband stragglers to broadband.

For corporations, where bandwidth is not an issue, we could easily start seeing desktops disappear.

For consumers, there are a lot of people that can get by with just a mobile phone. They don’t have broadband, and they are living without desktops.

Again, the part I don’t know is when this transition really kicks off in a big way. But the part I do know is that the desktop is too costly to exist in it’s current form. If I worked for Microsoft, I’d start creating a desktop OS that has zero administrative costs. That might curtail the migration away from Windows by keeping the cost of deployments down.

Therein lies one of the great problems – Broadband penetration in the US has stagnated.

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/164/report_display.asp

The report argues that, while broadband adoption has grown quickly in recent years, there are reasons to believe that it is slowing. The report develops a model of broadband adoption that hypothesizes that the intensity of online use is the critical variable in understanding the home high-speed adoption decision and the trajectory of the adoption curve. Using national survey data from 2002 and 2005, the paper shows that the role of online experience in explaining intensity of internet use has vanished over this time frame; the explanatory effect of having a broadband connection has grown. This suggests that relative to 2002 there is not much pent-up demand for high-speed internet use at home.

Earlier in the year, there was a piece in the NYTimes about high heating costs – and how people had to make the decision between oil or broadband. It’s pretty clear which one won.

That said it’s not all doom and gloom, but the reality is that the distribution of broadband in this nation will never be equal. (Whether or not that’s acceptable, is a very big question with no right answer.)