The Future of Broadband 2010

At the Rotterdam School of Management MBA students Rick Faase, Ruchi Liyanage, Coen Verdegaal and Andrea Zuccollo have as part of their assignment for the course New Global Business Environment looked at the future of Broadband in 2010. To download their full report in PDF please click here.

Introduction

This report focuses on forward-looking technologies and evolutions around the Internet world and the impact that they will have on broadband uptake. Even though some of these concepts and technologies are very much a longer-term view, concerned businesses (providers, Telco’s, broadcasting companies) need to be aware of some of the innovations in IT so they can form part of their longer-term broadband strategies. Although some parties believe that many technologies, such as Wi-Fi, fiber-to-the-home and Peer-to-Peer, will increase demand for broadband access, another view that is enlightened by Scenario Thinking reveals alternatives not so bright for this industry. It is important to examine a broad range of options, in order to prepare for different business options, not necessarily the ones that everybody expects from the current outlook of the market.

Scenarios

Digital Fragmentation

This scenario could become a dream for the current content providers and Telecom establishment, provided they adapt to it; furthermore it brings stability to a very dynamic market and helps to slow down the pressure on the consolidation of contents and distribution players. The negative point, though, is the decrease in revenues due to divergence in standards and the consequent market fragmentation.

Broadband Doom

This scenario paints the possibility that the world we know today will evolve in a direction where, amongst other things, there’s no development for broadband; this world means limited business for access providers and a significant redimensioning of contents providers. The economy doesn’t pick up again, and the globalization trend is reversed.

Empty Toll Highway

In this last scenario, the market has taken a sharp detour due to the failure of killer applications to establish themselves and drive revenues from valued added services; history is repeating itself like a few years ago with the WAP technology, and companies will have to react to decreasing return on investments ROIs and limited consumer sage of their services. Companies built expensive infrastructure, but the usage is very limited.

To download the full report in PDF please click here.