Download - Broadband Properties
Download - Broadband Properties
Download - Broadband Properties
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The Inevitability of Bandwidth Growth<br />
All too often, we think of increased<br />
bandwidth as a matter of speed. It lets<br />
us do things faster. Send an e-mail<br />
message. View a Web site. But the real value<br />
of bandwidth is that it lets us do entirely new<br />
things with our computers, cameras, televisions<br />
– with our network.<br />
Entirely new and unforeseen product successes<br />
have dazzled, bemused and annoyed<br />
us. YouTube appeared in February 2005 – and<br />
quickly became one of the five largest users<br />
of bandwidth on earth, and the largest single<br />
user of Internet bandwidth. Now it is starting<br />
to distribute HDTV-quality video.<br />
What are these new things? We have the beginnings<br />
of glimpses of many of them. In the<br />
past few years, we have seen such new products<br />
and services as:<br />
• Voice over Internet Protocol telephones.<br />
They’re not only cheaper for the consumer,<br />
they are better. Many VoIP providers<br />
allow incoming callers to find the line you<br />
are on, and easily leave messages – text<br />
and video as well as voice – where you can<br />
easily pick them up.<br />
• Video on the Web, and on mobile devices.<br />
• Internet-enabled cameras that upload photos<br />
and videos to Web sites with built-in<br />
Web browsers.<br />
• User-created video so grandparents can see<br />
the children, or so a budding comedian or<br />
musician can develop an audience.<br />
• Internet-enabled picture frames that automatically<br />
display photos sent via e-mail.<br />
Although Edison would later invent<br />
hundreds of products that use electricity,<br />
he was not thinking about air conditioning<br />
for private homes when he built the first<br />
electricity distribution network. Nor<br />
was he thinking about dishwashers,<br />
refrigerators, computers or those<br />
rechargeable batteries for your iPod,<br />
mobile phones and cameras.<br />
We have every reason to think the innovation<br />
will continue and that our need for ever<br />
more bandwidth will grow. Only fiber to the<br />
home will be able to deliver it. In fact, only<br />
fiber can reliably deliver that bandwidth now,<br />
to meet current needs.<br />
We have absolutely no reason to think innovation<br />
will stop. When Thomas Edison built<br />
the world’s first central-station electrical generating<br />
plants, electric lighting was the “killer<br />
app.” Although Edison would<br />
later invent hundreds of products<br />
that use electricity, he was<br />
not thinking about air conditioning<br />
for private homes when<br />
he built the first electricity distribution<br />
network. Nor was he<br />
thinking about dishwashers,<br />
refrigerators, computers or<br />
those rechargeable batteries<br />
for your iPod, mobile phones<br />
and cameras.<br />
The least expensive desktops<br />
today come with 160 GB hard<br />
10 | The Advantages of Fiber | FTTH Council
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