Lower cost of datastorage & bandwidth

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Back? The future of books

Description:

Because of current development in technology physical storage of digital data is fast becoming cheaper, and because of the same reason so is data traffic. This is of relevance to the development of e-books because without it both the user and the offering party would have paid to much for an e-book business to be profitable. Large books could not have been send to homes with the ease it can be done now 20 years ago.

Enablers:

1. Technological advancements in ISPs

2. Broader internet coverage

3. Better broadband access

4. A lot of competition, many companies are offering servers and storages these days

5. Very large group of customers, everyone is using it, advantages of scale apply

6. Businesses providing hosting services are outsourcing a lot of their hardware needs, allowing them to take advantage of lower cost of labor, energy and land in other countries

Inhibitors:

1. Demand is also growing, if this exceeds supply prices could go up again

2. Energy prices are going up, and large server parks are energy consuming to maintain and keep cool

3. With more and more sensitive data being stored online, backups are becoming more important as well, and redundant storage is more expensive

4. Most server parks are located in country where prosperity is high because the internet connection has to be very good, and costs of land, energy and work hours is always going up, which will reflect in the prices of data storage and other online services

5. People are expecting their internet to become faster and faster, this means the focus of bandwidth is on becoming faster rather than becoming cheaper