While I'm busy knifing BT, here's another reason to be skeptical of the clarity of their vision:
... Verwaayen revealed BT will eventually have a portfolio of broadband products at speeds going up to 1Mbps, 3Mbps and higher but said: "All services, with the exception of live TV, are possible with 1.5 to 2Mbps."
He noted that Softbank, one of the largest providers of broadband in Japan, supplies connections of up to 45Mbps but when he asked them what different things this allows end users to do, he was told: "Nothing but it's great marketing."
-- BT CEO responds to 'UK worse than Japan' criticism, silicon.com, 1 March 2004
If Internet traffic continues doubling each year, where will the increases come from? ... Video is likely to play an increasing role, taking over as a major driver of traffic growth from music (which got a large boost from Napster). However, this video is likely to be in the form of file transfers, not streaming real time traffic. ... [T]he basic argument is that video will follow the example of Napster (or MP3, to be more precise), which is delivered primarily as files for local storage and replay, and not in streaming form. ... It also allows for faster than real time transmission when networks acquire sufficient bandwidth. (This will allow for sampling and for easy transfer to portable storage units.)
-- Internet TV: Implications for the long distance network, Andrew Odlyzko, 27 July 2001
Yep, when you're about to rush out of the house and realise you forgot to download the movie, that's when you want a gigabit connection.
Rhetorical reader survey: how much of your life has been spent watching a counter go from 0% to 100%?
Posted by Martin Geddes at 1:15 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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