Everything from PCs to smartphones to Set-top boxes are becoming ‘connected’. The benefits are both varied and enormous from being able to access an incredible array of information to the most diverse levels of multi-media content imaginable to something as prosaic as a firmware update for a Blu-Ray player.
However, most peoples’ portal into the WWW is via their residential gateway or mobile broadband provider and that brings me on to the subject of broadband connection speeds. I have to confess that I find the whole broadband connection speed debate a trifle irritating. Whilst there is no doubt that upgrading from a dial up modem with a few tens of kilobits per second connection speed to something that can provide many hundreds of kilobits per second or even several megabits per second brings enormous benefits in terms of data throughput, it is of course never as simple as the marketing hype from the various service providers would prefer to suggest.
In any data transmission system, there exists bottlenecks to data throughput. If all you have today for your internet connection you have a 1200 baud modem, then the chances are that the limitation lies in the modem. On the other hand, of you have a 40 megabits per second optical connection, the chances of being able to fully unlock the potential of this bandwidth is minimal. I personally have a 8 megabits per second ADSL connection at home and I am rarely if ever limited by the bandwidth of my connection at home. Indeed for most downloads, I find that the data throughput is rarely greater than a few hundred Kilobits per second. The reason for this is that my DSL connection is NOT the bottleneck in the link.
Similarly, my empirical observation is that my 7.2 Megabits per second HSDPA connection for my notebook PC, gives me much slower download times than my similar bandwidth ADSL connection. The fact is for all data that we receive, there are servers that have to deliver the data and then transport it through the network. The performance of these elements within the system are just as important to our experience as the bandwidth of our own connection. It is rather analogous to the fatuous mega-pixel race that occurred within the digital still camera market. It is in our nature to assume that ‘more’ will automatically man ‘better’, when unfortunately this may not be the case. Putting a 10 mega pixel camera into a cellphone might be a good marketing gimmick, but it when you have extremely small sensors with limited dynamic range and crude plastic lenses, the result is the same very poor quality image that you might have got from a 1 mega pixel camera.
The big content ‘driver’ for the internet is almost certain to be video. Services such as YouTube, Netflix and other video on demand services are gaining remarkable levels of popularity. However, they are also starting to create a serious problem. You might have a 40 megabits per second fibre based internet connection, but that will not mean that you will be able to automatically stream real-time HD video into your living room. The infrastructure within the wider network needs to be able to handle such throughput and the crucial question is “Who bears the cost of the infrastructure upgrade?” Where is the motivation for ISPs to bear the cost of major infrastructure upgrades just because the BBC’s iPlayer or Hulu have become so popular?
Similarly, mobile broadband providers are finding that YouTube and such as like are swallowing up vast swathes of RF spectrum and server bandwidth, but provide no commercial benefit to the connection service provider. To better illustrate the point, uniquely – among OECD countries, America has adopted no policies to require owners of cable infrastructure to open their infrastructure to competitors (c.f. BT in the UK) to enhance competition. Instead, the US relies entirely on competition based upon provision of rival infrastructure. This approach has failed wholeheartedly, demonstrated by the fact that in a recent study by Saïd Business School looking at broadband quality, Chicago, America’s best performing city, ranked 26th in the world, below Sofia and Bucharest. The FCC argues that in its recent March 16th proposal to auction large chunks of radio spectrum for mobile broadband use will provide the needed competition, but arguably this is two sides of the same coin.
Growth in demand for IP based video over the next few years is likely to require network infrastructure upgrades of several orders of magnitude. Something is going to have to change or consumers are likely to become rather disillusioned with the reality that lies behind the marketing hype.
