ISP Review - Looking Forward - 2005

ISP Review investigates what we can expect from 2005

Looking Forward - 2005
By Mark 'Winter' Jackson : Dec 13th-2004 : Page 2 of 3

"Ultimately any new fixed wireless standard faces an uphill struggle against the established might of xDSL and cable services."


The practice of opening up BT’s telephone exchanges to rivals (LLU) requires heavy planning and financial stamina; consequently operators and ISP’s may delay newer technology until the networks to support them are in place.

There’s always a chance that somebody somewhere will manage to leak such a product onto the market (faster cable or ADSL2/2+ etc.), although it would most likely be done to a smaller scale (trial), at least until 2006.

Next generation wireless technologies, such as WiMAX, will be among the few true innovators of 2005. These new services are much more flexible than existing Wi-Fi and have the potential to eat into the market shares of both xDSL and 3G mobile phone services, although once again much of this will remain under trial.

Ultimately any new fixed wireless standard faces an uphill struggle against the established might of xDSL and cable services. Finalised standards have yet to be set, causing additional delays.

Finally we have Ethernet To The Home (ETTH), which appears to be a longer term plan for some operators. Don’t expect to see this during 2005, but you will hear about further trials from isolated communities. ETTH has the potential to replace xDSL and bring in ultra-fast speeds, yet the huge investment required is likely to slow its adoption.

Evolutionary Content

Most research agrees that Television and Internet access have been growing steadily closer, with many people now preferring to surf the Internet than watch TV. Typically most would like to do both and thus an increasing number of broadcasters have begun merging rich content with online viewing. Similarly ever more ISP’s and operators have also begun investigating their ‘broadcast’ options.

If the content evolution takes off, as many expect it will, then demand for faster broadband connections could spiral. 512Kbps may deliver reasonable quality video streams, but a high quality TV program or film would require 2Mbps+.

Many of the broadband services in 2005 will also have one thing in common, bandwidth/data download restrictions. These ‘caps’ have now become quite popular among ISP’s and will continue to spread, yet providers will need to remain mindful of newer content and any additional requirements for it.

Watching a small box on your monitor, displaying a streamed video, is likely to become increasingly unacceptable, yet demand for higher quality may take a few years to fully develop.

Customer Support

Perhaps one of the most noticed, yet little spoken, declines over the past year has been in the quality of telephone support, something that shows no sign of improvement during 2005. While a handful of providers do still work to improve this, many are instead outsourcing their call centres to India.

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