ISP Review looks at the possible future of broadband technologies

"Every cable modem deployed today has the capability to burst up to 28Mbp/s. A number of factors mean that's not on offer to our blueyonder customers yet, including current consumer demand.

Around ten per cent of our blueyonder broadband customers take one of our faster 1Mb or 2Mb services, but they are still aimed at advanced internet users and the growth of broadband in Britain will continue to be driven by more standard speeds for some time yet. That will change when home broadband use has become more widespread and bandwidth-hungry devices, applications and services become the drivers of further development.

The cable coming into your home has a capacity of about 2Gbp/s, but today we use less than two per cent for the delivery of broadband internet, with the rest used for digital and analogue TV.

In five to ten years, analogue TV will have been shut down, freeing up massive bandwidth for the delivery of IP services, and the line between our IP, TV and telephony platforms will begin to blur.

Many factors will dictate how much of that extra bandwidth we dedicate to IP services, and it will boil down to consumer demand and practical application requirements, not bandwidth for bandwidth's sake. But the simple fact remains that you'll always be able to fit a lot more data down a coax cable than a twisted copper pair, and with consistent performance across the network.

Broadband-enabled appliances are also set to become a significant part of our lives, but we're in danger of drowning in the technological complexity offered by IP compatibility.

We already have to deal with different address books, bookmarks, personalisation settings, security settings, usernames and passwords across different web sites. Imagine the potential mess when you add multiple access devices to the equation.

That's when the cable network will become more crucial than ever and key portions of data will become an integral part of the network, not your PC. Information will be accessed effortlessly and securely from the network, regardless of what device you're using.

[Print Page | Next Page (5)]>>