Future of Broadband

.The group that selects this topic as thiers please put your name and composition here!
.Then place your 20 research questions
.Then divide the questions amoungst the group and answer them in this page! (to be done for next week Thursday - 4 May)

Group Members

Our group consists of 4 people:

1. Edurne Ozaeta 2. Jacob Oskam 3. Murat Ögat 4. Magali Bongrand

Introduction

With more that 100 million broadband users the underlying access technology of the internet is changing. This enables a new set of applications, new business models and the revisiting of old business models. People today spend four times as much time on the internet as in the heydays of 2000. Very different conceptions of broadband access. Several of the cable and television and telecoms companies see broadband as distribution means for, television, similar to the airwaves, but in this case allowing for pay for view access of the content, therefore would like high downstream speeds and low upstream speed. Internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Amazon) see this as interactive infrastructure and therefore want more synchronous (i.e. equal up and downstream speeds). The current debate of net neutrality, is the start of the coming painful convergence of television, music and telephony on the internet and IP as a base architecture. Useful places to look are:

Vint Cerf (at Google)
Broadband use statistics
Music Download models
Broadband providers
IP ver 6
Always On

Research Questions:

We consider the following questions crucial in understanding the broadband technology and it's future:

Basic:

* What is broadband?

The term applies to networks having bandwidths significantly greater than that found in telephony networks. Broadband systems are capable of carrying a large number of moving images or a vast quantity of data simultaneously. Broadband techniques usually depend on coaxial or optical cable.

what are the advantages of broadband?

Fast, always on line, cheaper than dial-up, enables bigger files to be downloaded (video, music)

* what are the techniques available?

The breakdown of broadband technologies in December 2005 is as follows:

    o DSL: 62%
    o Cable modem: 31%
    o Other technologies (e.g. satellite, fiber and fixed wireless) : 7%

Current:

* what are the current usages of broadband?

- high speed internet

- television (for instance Versatel in the Netherlands)

- telephone

* what is the current broadband penetration?

The current broadband penetration in OECD countries (December 2005) is 13.6% of the population. The growth rate of the penetration was 15% in 2005. The top 4 countries are Iceland, Korea, The Netherlands and Denmark with penetration rates over 25%. In real number, the country with the largest amount of subscriber is the USA. The lowest penetration rate is granted to Greece with 1.4%. The EU 15 averages at 14.2% penetration.

The growth of broadband penetration amongst OECD countries is supported by the different governments and enjoys exponential growth:

     2001  2002  2003  2004  2005

OECD 2.9 4.9 7.3 10.2 13.6

EU15 1.6 3.4 5.9 9.7 14.2

* who are the main players?

In each of the separate countries, the national telecom provider is the main player for broadband diffusion, especially for DSL connections. Nevertheless, with the increased penetration of other techniques such as cable, fiber optic, satellite and wireless, new players come into play, often offering broadband internet in a bundle of products (Satellite/ cable TV, telecoms, etc.)

* what are the main bottlenecks to broadband diffusion?

Regional disparities, Transition to ‘real’ broadband, Security, Energy Consumption (an internet firewall consumes more energy per household than a clothes dryer),

• How is the internal rivalry among the main players?

Broadband players have taken different strategies to gain and retain customers. While phone companies have developed a “pricing strategy” based on high discounts, cable companies have develop a “value service oriented” strategy. For many years phone companies have been challenging cable operators to cut down prices of the services affecting Cable operators revenues. On the other hand cable operators have responded increasing the services. The competition between these two types of companies increased even more when cable companies started to offer telephone service along with television and high-speed Internet service.

Trends:

* what broadband techniques will emerge in the future?

- WiMax - BPL

Both forms of broadband delivery could be a real threat to the established DSL and cable operators. However, none of them have been fully implemented yet.

• Will the emerging broadband-over-powerline (BPL) technology be successful?

BPL proposed the use of the existing electrical grid as a giant data network that could form an immediate alternative to Cable and DSL. So far all intents to introduce this service have not been successful. However, it is a genius concept and might represent a real threat to cable and phone companies. BPL companies have started to develop alliances and partnerships with different types of companies to try to implement this concept.

* what are the future opportunities of broadband?

* Is their a growing distance between countires with a good developed broadband system and conutries with an underdeveloped broadband system?

* Will the limited availabilty of broadband in under-developed countries limit their development?

Developing countires can have a lack of information compared to developed countries.

Future development in techniques such as WiMax.....

*What will be the issues raised in mass multimedia download and sharing related to broadband growth?

*When will hardware bottlenecks limit the growth of broadband?

*When will the marginal utility of increased bandwidth be negligible?

Useful links:

http://www.oecd.org/document/39/0,2340,en_2649_34223_36459431_1_1_1_1,00.html