What is the future of broadband?

[#1]

The telecoms and Internet strategy consultants over at Telco 2.0 have written a very interesting article with their take on the future of broadband. They're talking about worldwide trends rather than just the UK but there are some intriguing lines of thought. In particular Telco 2.0 make some observations on the PlusNet approach to Traffic Management:

The ISP product suffers from severe economic problems. A few users are diverging in their usage from the rest, driving capital and operational cost. These users are different from day to day, so you can’t shed them. Attempts at traffic shaping to manage cost only work with a policy of ‘radical honesty’, such as that from PlusNet in the UK. Retail prices are lowering to the point where additional usage is being priced below the cost of transit for that traffic.

There are some predictions about further consolidation in the Telco and ISP market with only the biggest suppliers surviving. In addition the widely recognised 'battle for the living room' is predicted to get more fierce in the coming 12-18 months. Only yesterday Apple reaffirmed their plans with iTunes delivering HD movies to the AppleTV set-top box. So what do we think? Well, we're going to publish our plans for 2008 in the next few weeks as we have done for the past few years, and we'll share a few thoughts on how we see the market evolving and how we're going to improve our service for you. What do you think? Why not comment on this article or contribute in our forums?

[#2]

I would look to see a farer pricing structure from all broadband suppliers, so that "up to 8MB" also reflects "up to (the maximum in a given pricing band)" based on the simple ratio: (mean broadband speed actually received)/8MB. This would mean a core price for services and gigabytes supplied plus a pro-rata amount based on real-world performance. Impossible dream?

[#3]

Compared to the Far East who have had the benefit of fibre being installed from scratch with 100 Mbit bandwidths, we in Blighty have to suffer "up to" very optimistic 8 Mbit speeds, which in reality means between 1 and 6Mb depending on whether one lives within touching distance of an exchange. The problem lies with BT who like the water companies and most other privatised utilities, have sought fit to cream off profits rather than invest in replacing antiquated copper wiring, which is so old here in the country, that the weather outside can be judged by the variance in download speeds. Until this problem is rectified, I don't see very many advances in broadband. Incidently, what happened to WiMax? which being radio transmitted would bypass the problem, and really make a difference.

[#4]

Hi Ray, Your idea I've heard before, that price should be relative to speed. However that's not how ISPs incurr costs. It's actually the amount downloaded that determines cost. So 500kbps costs the same to provide as 8Mbps, but 50GB of downloading at either speed is more expensive than 5GB. So, not an impossible dream, but one that we (and most other UK ISPs) cannot support. Neil.

[#5]

Here in our area we are getting good internet connection and we now uses wireless technology which makes internet surfing more easier free hotspots zone are anywhere on fastfood chain hospital and other establishment..