More bandwidth please
Posted by Neil Bant on 16 October 2008
In Broadband Trends and Technology
Commonsensical blog:
For the last ten years I’ve seen home connections change from slow dial-up sub-56k modems to always on ADSL2+ broadband connections. On a business perspective often GB fibre connections are required for businesses transferring data from one primary site to a secondary Disaster recovery site. The switch over from slow dial-up connections to broadband was an amazing leap in usability of the Internet. With dial-up connections my partner saw no use for the ‘Internet’ and was apathetic to what it could provide. 30 seconds just to connect and then waiting for pages to download, could be compared to having the latency on a long distance phone call. The communications just does not flow freely and spoils the experience.
Then along came broadband and revolutionised our way of connecting to the net making broadband one of the fasted adopted technologies of all time. But our hunger for more bandwidth continues. Watching video content online has grown exponentially which drives up the bandwidth required. Using the BBC iplayer connecting through a wii connection to my TV makes catching up with missed TV shows a doddle, and in full screen. Again buffering of streaming media spoils the experience. That is like having pauses on your TV. The next big thing is getting High Definition TV via the IP network.
So yes, I would like more bandwidth please, for the same amount of money per month too, if possible.
Most people ask why on earth do you need so much more bandwidth. Well, I was watching a James May documentry, one of the presenters off Top Gear, discussing teleportation, like on Star Trek. ‘Beem me up Scotty’. He explained that scientists had managed to teleport a photon from one point to another. The next challenge is to transfer a whole atom. Whoopee. However, if you wanted to transfer a person, you would need to transfer 40 billion atoms at the correct rotation and at the same time. I think they estimated that on a current broadband connection speeds this would take 15 years to complete the teleportation. So roll-on providing us more bandwidth and more control. We need it for future developments that have not even been thought of.
Things you might be interested in: ADSL2+
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October 16th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I wonder how much bandwidth we will end up actually needing in years to come Neil? We are hearing things on Web 3.0 and how this will enable more of a ‘Machine is Learning’ environment, will this extend out to even more clever technology use – will we ever be able to keep up with demand?
I suppose the more we depend on online for shopping, technology and business use the higher the demand for bandwidth – and that demand will push the providers into provision.
October 16th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
The main issue on bandwidth to the home is that we all use BT’s wonderful copper and ADSL2+ / SDSL is as good as it gets in terms of speed over a copper line. Cable providers are a bit quicker than ADSL but what we really need is fibre to the home or an amazing higher speed ‘mobile’ beyond 3G high speed access.
There will definetely be a lag in bandwidth versus demand going forward as no-one can seem to justify digging fibre to the home to offer ethernet MB/GB connections. Large businesses can afford fibre links that are shared by the workforce and systems and GB fibre technology keeps advancing.
However, I suspect ethernet over copper providing an up to 10Gbps (400 times faster than ADSL2+) would be possible nationally, before a fibre to the home solution comes along. The main issue will still be that the speed you get will be distance limited because the data is travelling down copper and not fibre (light) circuits.
Imagine a world were bandwidth was not an issue and we had interaction at the speed of light. It would be the human brain and speed of thought that would be the limiting factor instead of bandwidth.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I think even today we are beginning to see requirements for more bandwidth.
Households are not only surfing the net and retrieving emails, but they are using it for telephone calls (VOIP), PC Online Gaming (World of WarCraft, or whatever the fad of the day may be), XBox, PS3 and PSP all connect via the internet, Video Streaming (BBC iPlayer), Video Downloads (Lets not go into detail!) and Family Photo Album uploads/downloads.
With computers so cheap and laptops now coming free with your mobile phone, I think we’ll soon see statistics in the UK showing average households with not just 2.4 children, but 2.4 laptops.
With a typical family using several of the above, more bandwidth right now please!
Otherwise, us adults won’t be able to watch Live at the Apollo when we want, as lets face it, who uses a recorder these day.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
How much has the average family usage gone up in the last 2-3 years? I would say it has shot up. The reason for this is laptop prices dropping and more and more T.V companies providing online services, Modern gaming online, I-tunes and social networking sites (although they might not require large amounts of bandwidth to use. they have got more people interested in using the net)
In my house we have 4 laptops and one desktop all running off the same connection. Getting used for all different things from online gaming to chatting with family on messenger who live abroad.
We need more bandwidth please!
October 27th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Thanks for commenting. I could not agree more. I’m using my ipod touch to check my webmail, whilst my daughter is on the laptop, my wife is on the desktop and my youngest is playing and downloading Nintendo Wii characters on the wii machine.
I’ve watched every episode of Merlin from the BBC via my WII machine in full screen directly onto my TV. However, last night I could not get the BBC iplayer to do anything and watch any programme. Resources unavailable. I assume the BBC is struggling to provide us all with connections and I wanted to watch it directly streaming rather than downloading to the PC/LAPTOP.
The BBC iplayer is a fantastic service when it works, but its sucking up bandwidth, so all ISP’s need lower cost high-bandwidth from BT. Roll on multiple GB interconnect networks and higher performing DSL connections.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
This article posted on BBC News today (10.11.08) has huge implications for ISP’s and future trends of internet users.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7720918.stm