Social Change at Broadband Speed

Broadband access is now seen as a fundamental right by 4 out 5 people surveyed in a BBC World Service survey. The research was performed across 26 countries and consumers in both highly-networked and broadband-deprived countries were as one in their belief in the right to communicate. Was TV or radio ever seen as a basic right? Was the newspaper ever seen as a basic right?

Last year, Finland became the first country to make broadband access a human right to be enjoyed by all citizens and the government now has to provide 1Mb broadband to all its 5.3 million citizens.

The race to get more bandwidth and make it more widely available is clearly a challenge. In the UK, Virgin Media aim to use telegraph poles to extend the reach of FTTH (fiber-to-the-home). According to Virgin Media users participating in a test will get download speeds of up to 50Mbps. The objective being to test whether using telegraph poles is a viable fiber option to rural areas and instead of digging and laying cable underground, it merely piggybacks over the posts.

However, fiber has still got a very long way to go with only 15 European countries having a fiber market penetration of 1% or over. The highest fiber penetration is in Lithuania, Sweden, Norway, Slovenia and Estonia.

Broadband speed has even become a political football in the impeding UK general election. The Conservatives are pledging to give Britain the fastest high speed broadband network in Europe. They claim that they will increase the current speeds of between 3MBPS and 4.5Mbps, to 100 Mbps, to most homes by 2017. The current government wants everyone to get at least 2Mbps by 2012 and claims it has already promised 100Mbps broadband to 90% of the population by 2017. The difference appears on how each party will get there, with Labour wanting to raise a levy of 50p-a-month on people with fixed land lines, whilst the Conservatives see private funding topped up potentially with the BBC licence.

So as we move into this permanently connected fast speed information superhighway, what will it mean to the average person, the infirmed, the unemployed and the well off? Will it change how we communicate, what we communicate and how we access information and how we consume media? The challenge is not broadband, but the social challenges and opportunities it delivers.

EU News

The European Parliament is one of those governmental bodies who you either love or hate and often at the same time!
Last week appears to be a good one for them in that they firstly voted to prevent EU member states from imposing a "three strikes" rule on unauthorised file sharers. This is the second time around and although the majority was reduced common sense prevailed and the law to compel ISPs to disconnect file sharers who are caught sharing or downloading copyrighted material online three times was again defeated. However the French government has already implemented its own three strikes law – nothing new there then!

In response to the rapid growth of broadband has led the European Commission to bring forward a review of Europeans telecoms services. Currently around 36% of EU households have high-speed net access and although this is growing annually at a rate of 20%, the Commission want broadband availability to be a basic right for all EU citizens by 2010.

The big issue is the disparity between states with nations such as Denmark, Luxembourg and Belgium, offering 100% broadband availability against only 60% availability in Romania. Even in Germany and Italy, around 12% of the population is not covered by high-speed access.

The Commission is now inviting submissions from telecoms firms and, governments with the aim of producing a directive in 2009 and potentially legislation in 2010.

So if the World Goes Broadband What Does it Mean?

Broadband subscriptions in eight European countries are now above the levels in the United States and Japan. The EU stated this week that the EU has added 19 mill broadband lines in 2007, the equivalent of more than 50,000 households per day.

According to the commission 4 countries lead the world; Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland, and another 8 have higher penetration rates than the U.S. and Japan. Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg and France also surpassed the US in 2007 and this year Germany joined them. The European telecommunications market is now worth 300 billion euros.

As the bandwidth increases so does the opportunities. The mobile broadband market is also exploding and now driving new services and offers.

As we experience this shift in connectivity we have to question whether the current download paradigm is going to continue to be the dominant one in the near future. If we can access broadband bandwidth from anywhere at anytime why do we need ‘fat clients’ or devices that are expensive to buy are complex to run and consume storage and power? It make more sense to harness the power across the network and from ‘fat servers’. In a bookworld this could mean that the whole format and reader debate becomes a non issue and everything simply goes online. After all if the Kindle can download a book wirelessly anywhere why not just stream it anywhere and forget all the download hassle and the storage of up to 200 titles?

We all too often design solution based on yesterday and what we know and that is alas why they don’t last long.