Applications of Broadband

Description:

Commercial and practical uses of the broadband connections: high speed internet - telephone - television (for instance Versatel in the Netherlands), communications - Information seeking - Information producing - Download - Transactions - Entertainment activities

Enablers:

- Speed

- Improvement of hardware bottlenecks

- Encryption systems (security)

- Increasing demand for e-commerce

- Internet & Broadband penetration

- Increasing credible and relevant business model

- Positive feedback loops around reliable e-business supplier

- .Net technology

Inhibitors:

- Copyrights

- Security

- Internet vandalism (viruses/ spams)

- Difficulty to change shopping habit, need for physical contact with product, specialised product (prescription glasses)

- Creative response from traditional retailers (transform street shopping as a hobby)

- Some services are technology immune, they force people in the shopping streets

- slow pace of change in QoS technologies (not sufficent QoS for online DVD download), doubts that QoS will ever be able to devliver up to the needed level

Paradigms:

Consumers nowadays have access to everything they want on the click of a button, whatever the item, the country of origin, or the location of the supplier.

Because the consumers are used to get access to everything they want from home, they now demand for services (internet banking, recharging phone credit, turning in electricity meter data, etc.) to be available and accessible 24/7, from their living room, for free (not over a pay-phone service).

As people find new way to socialise online and as it becomes increasingly easy to find interlocutors sharing one's interests, the way relationships, networking is done is changing rapidly.

With an increasing amount of "internet friends" people tend to want to be more accessible online.

Gradual return to "normality" after original confusion over ethical behavior: what is stealing? what is plagiarism?

Experts:

- Skype

- msn Yahoo!, AOL)

- iTunes

- Netflixs

- Bill Gates

- Steve Jobs

- Symantec

Timing:

Dates for key milestones in the development of the driving force.