Why the Long Wait?

It turns out that waste doesn't offend people at some of the world's most successful high-tech companies -- companies that operate on a strategic principle that Reed calls "constant overprovisioning." Intel and other semiconductor makers would go out of business if they didn't massively invest in factories before demand for their chips ever materialized. "Because it's such a competitive industry, the players must make huge capital investments in new chip designs and in fabrication equipment, even though they can't predict demand," Reed says. "The idea is to invest early -- and always to have overcapacity."

The downside, of course, is that if demand flattens out, microchip producers are saddled with huge product surpluses. "That can be embarrassing for a while, and there can be real costs when that happens," says Reed. "But for the most part, customers and companies share those costs."

Reed's ideas have gained currency in some key places. Through his involvement on the board of advisers of the influential Vanguard conferences, Reed has spread the word to several leading technologists. And as a fellow with Diamond Technology Partners, a digital-strategy consulting firm based in Chicago, he has been putting his theories about latency and network performance on the agenda of Diamond's high-powered corporate clients.

Even so, among most network providers, Reed's theory remains decidedly radical. There are a few well-known companies, such as UUNet, that have bought into the idea of making latency the key measure of customer satisfaction for their Internet service. But even the people at UUNet have trouble seeing how deliberately overbuilding its network will boost performance.

"We spend $2 million to $3 million every day on network development, and we are moving as fast as is humanly possible," says Jeff Sturgeon, 40, vice president of marketing at UUNet. "I don't see how we could ever say, 'We're going to build excess capacity into the system.' "

Reed's best chance to test his prescription for improving the Net's performance lies with a couple of young, fiber-based "backbone" carriers. He's not prepared to name those companies, and he's not yet sure if they will embrace his agenda.

So will David Reed's strategy eventually help reduce the amount of time that we spend waiting to use the Internet? We'll just have to wait and see.

Paul C. Judge (pjudge@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior editor. Contact David P. Reed by email (dpreed@reed.com), or learn more about his career and thinking on the Web (www.reed.com).