Network management Toolkit

What has broadband done for us?

Sally Whittle ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 31 Mar 2004 12:15 BST

The Age of Broadband is nigh. It might not have arrived in time to ride the wave of the Internet boom, but the spread of high-speed connections has achieved something more important: critical mass.

By the end of this year, some 1.8 million households in the UK will have access to high-speed Internet services, or just over 5 percent of all households nationwide. Globally, there are now 80 million high-speed subscribers, an increase of almost 75 percent over the 2002 figures, according to research group Point Topic.

That is a lot of people -- and it's having a huge effect on what we see and do online. Video and music are increasingly becoming the norm, and consumers are enthusiastically adopting high-speed e-commerce. In fact, those who move to broadband are three times more likely to download videos as those using a dial-up connection, according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a US non-profit organisation that studies the impact of the Web on everyday life.

Train times to bank accounts
Broadband is also changing our daily lives, says Jed Kelko, an analyst with Forrester Research. "Broadband means that more of our daily transactions are conducted online, from checking train times to accessing our bank account," he says.

Research conducted by analyst group Ovum suggests that the increased use of broadband has been responsible for the growth of several applications. Ovum argues that software downloads, music downloads, video on demand, online learning, live concert broadcasts, online gaming, gambling, and adult entertainment could not have survived without broadband.

Always-on applications
Of course, these services existed before broadband, but the key point is that these applications are compelling enough for people to go out and buy broadband services, says Andy Kitchener, chief executive of e-commerce software vendor Shopcreator. "Broadband is evolving from an exciting new technology to being a platform for these powerful, always-on applications," he says. Applications such as BT's Datasure online backup or Voice over IP phone services would not have survived without broadband, Kitchener claims.