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Where Will Broadband's Killer App Come From?
tripletwentie asks: "Here's an interesting story from ZDnet that talks about the success and the pitfalls of the world adopting broadband, and how regular Joes like us will change the world the way we know it today. Is it really the idea that you can get any piece of music for free that will attract people to buying broadband or maybe the idea of streaming movies straight from your computer to your flat screen tv? Sure, broadband in the house will become a utility like having electricity in the house, but what will get us there? I would love to hear the thoughts and ideas of the programming world." While the article is breathy in anticipation of the promise of broadband, I think its an intersting thing to note that media companies are also in an interesting position, in the fact that certain media companies are already in control of the technology behind broadband itself. Can anyone say "potential conflicts of interest"?
If I could watch my choice of TV shows -- while not paying a monthly fee (like cable) -- and pay only for those, I'd be in heaven. Why should I need to shell out $45/month if I only watch The Screensavers and the X-Files? I'd even accept a commercial or two mixed in there.
But there's so much crap on TV, that it ain't worth paying for (so I don't).
Method of processing duck feet
I think we have already seen the killer app, Napster and its sucessor Gnutella have provided broadband users the ability to really use their bandwidth. The majority of the content being provided on these kinds of services are from Cable and DSL subscribers, who are capable of uploading to multiple broadband and 56k subscribers at reasonable speeds. When it comes to browsing the web and checking your email, a 56k will do fine. But when you want to download full movies, albums or software from Gnutella, only broadband will do.
One major point that must be remembered is broadband is not a panacea to cable companies, but certainly a relief to their monopolies. Tired of paying $40 for basic cable? Get broadband.
The killer app is time shifting. Rather than setting a VCR/DVR to record your favorite show, or go to the movie theater at an appointed time, you can dictate exactly when to start, stop and pause your entertainment. Email is an example of this, I send you email, and my message is time-shifted to a point where it's convenient for you to respond.
The second killer app is going to be video conferencing. My relatives will all have web cams by the end of this year, and real time family conversations across state boundaries is important, especially for those with kids. But the video is crummy! USB 2.0 and faster video cameras will take us to a better picture locally, but only broadband and multicasting will take us the rest of the way. For broadband to truly work out, though, multicasting HAS to be implemented on a wider basis. It should become a requirement for IPv6 routers to deal properly with multicasting, and we need IPv6 so we can get our own IP address easily and cheaply for each device in each home.
But the real reason broadband hasn't picked up is that the consumer market cannot support the infrastructure. Nearly every major advancment that made it in the last hundred years made it because business adopted it. Business will NOT adopt broadband until it is as reliable as a T1, yet SDSL connections (which approach and pass a T1 in speed, and are often more reliable/dependable than other broadband services, not to be confused with ADSL) are as expensive as a T1 or better. Not only that, but a T1 can handle both phone and data, according to need.
Broadband is suffering right now as a consumer service, but isn't going to take off until business starts investing in its reliability and speed.
And it still bugs me that I can get 2Mb over cable modem from some web sites, but not others. My connection is fast enough, but web hosting sites need to get exponentially larger pipes for broadband to make a difference - either that or a fundamental shift has to take place in the way it works - perhaps a distributed model such as akami(sp, I know).
-Adam
My enemies hate me more than your enemies hate you. Mine put up better "why he sucks" sites.
Being on the @home broadband network, I can tell you that the REAL killer apps are still the Nimda and CodeRed worms which continue to run loose on many machines. Talk about a bandwidth siphon! I can't think of anything else that's sucked as much bandwidth as these guys.
My generated report indicates over 152,000 attacks since June!
That report was generated with WormScan, a neat tool for analyzing your Apache logs. I should probably disclose that I'm the author of WormScan - feel free to give it a go against your logs.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Microsoft thinks XBox will be the killer app for broadband. What could be more power & network intensive than multi-player FPS's with voice comms?
at least for me...
And that would be forcing a service to broadband: i.e. I'm a Time Warner Cable subscriber and I HAVE to use AOL to access broadband. If that happens then there will be no incentive for independent companies (the ones who historically make the killer apps) to design something new and interesting. All of the control will be in the hands of AOL, MS (via AT&T/Comcast/Cox) and the like.
Now, I think that AOL service should be an option if you're a TWC subscriber, but I think that broadband and services should be orthogonal.
We're a programming shop, 80% of which is web browser based client/server apps (you know, stuff like /.)
We have nine full time employees. (5 programmers, 1 gfx designer, 2 managers, 1 sales). We have no premises and don't all live in the same city. Our whole business runs from the back bedrooms of each of us.
IRC is our favoured medium of communication and most hours of the day / night there is at least one of us in the channel
The sales/management team go on site to clients for meetings which clients like because it saves them travel time time too.
If that's not possible we just hire a room at a nice posh hotel which always goes down well.
Once a month we all get together and have a face to face meeting around a nice, company paid for lunch.
It's definately my favourite ever job and would not be possible without a good solid 24/7 connection. The minimum anyone "here" has is 128k ISDN but as the [A]DSL rollout continues we are gradually moving over (I'm on DSL).
Before we started the company we all worked together in the same office and I know that that has been a factor in our success. And successful we are. Our overheads for the year (April-April) we covered by the end of August! We're all looking forward to the profit share scheme come May I can tell you.
Our lives have dramatically improved. We are more involved in our family lives now we have the freedom to do so. Gone is the pressure to be at work by 9am every day. Those of us that have children get to see them more, doing the school run and participating in after school care. This has enabled my partner to go to work two days a week while having little impact on my work time.
No more trying to cram stuff in to the lunch hour.
No more having to use the computers / programs they give you, no BOFHs to contend with, no 4'x4' cube to go mad in, music as loud as you like, no more having to have clean clothes, a shave and a clean self!
I'm sure it's not for everyone. My friends think that they wouldn't have the discipline to keep working but I enjoy my work (usually) so that's not so much of a problem. And if I'm doing something tedious then my environment makes up for it. I can go water my plants or watch my tropical fish or pop out to the shops for a bit.
Actually I find it hard sometimes to stop working (which is why we introduced the profit share scheme so we wouldn't feel hard done by at 1am!)
It wouldn't be quite as feasable without broadband.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Broadband isn't really -that- big of a jump. It just unites the cost-effectiveness of a modem with the speed of a leased line. Granted, the technology used may be a bit different, but the end result is a simple evolution. Was there a killer app that made people upgrade from win3.1 to win95, or '95 to '98?
It'll just be a matter of time before more people switch over. I doubt there will be any mass exodous in the future. If anything is holding people back currently it would be poor availability of service and the bad reputation of the available service (which the recent @home failure doesn't help with).
I mean, as it is, people are waiting months to get DSL installs, so obviously there's enough of a demand for the service.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.