Vendors poised to tear down the Broadband wall
1999-10-12
The broadband revolution is only a hair’s breadth away. Barriers to its inception are about to be removed. A tidal wave of services will ensue, transforming how we live and work. It looks like the electronic future will be in time for the Millennium, after all.
The last pieces of technology are clicking into place, overcoming the two main obstacles which may be summarised as a lack of bandwidth to connected devices and a lack of suitable protocols to enable services to be delivered. These technologies include:
- 3rd generation wireless protocols, enabling high-bandwidth delivery to mobile phones and wireless PDAs.
- Roll-out of broadband technologies such as DSL and Cable, removing the low-bandwidth local loop from the equation.
- Creation of protocols such as WAP to enable wireless devices to access Internet-based services.
- Creation of devices sufficiently small, powerful and function-rich to take advantage of these technologies
- Creation of service-level protocols such as Jini and eSpeak to enable applications to communicate.
Most of these components exist as functioning prototypes and are being demonstrated at Telecomms 99 in Geneva this week. It is only a matter of time before they are delivered into the mass market, enabling such vapourware concepts as videophones, media streaming to the home, integrated messaging and phone-based eCommerce to become reality. Telecomms companies, hardware and software vendors are teaming with retailers, banks and content providers to achieve the dream and we have reached a point where it is only a matter of time before this happens.
The real test begins when the products and services begin to be rolled out in anger. It is likely that, the sales model will follow that of the mobile phone market, at least in Europe where phones are given away subject to taking a services agreement. This time, however, there are a raft of potential mechanisms given the variety of service providers. For mobile phones, the service for which customers were prepared to pay was the voice call. In the future, we will be able to cover the costs of hardware by, for example, committing to use E*Trade for our stock trades, or to use Blockbuster for our video stream.
In any case, it is highly likely that the availability of broadband bandwidth to the device will lead to an upsurge in the services available. Already companies such as Thomas Dolby’s Beatnik.com are intending to use the Internet as a delivery channel, superseding the need for anything other than cache storage on the wireless walkman. The currently reported glut in European bandwidth may well be quickly drained by the new generations of eCustomers who find the concept of pre-recorded music and video, frankly, old-fashioned.
(First published 12 October 1999)