Broadband Bringing Home the Bits (2002) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
3 Broadband Applications and Content
3 Broadband Applications and Content
Pages 82-119
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From page 82... ...
Indeed, as the discussion below suggests, there is much potential for future applications that enrich or complement traditional content and communications channels, but excitement about them should be tempered by an appraisal of the time frame in which these applications could be realized. In practice, what broadband customers see today is largely a better version of the Internet access that they enjoyed with dial-up ISP service, featuring Web-page viewing, e-mail access, messaging, and the like.
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From page 83... ...
Although there is no rigorous taxonomy of broadband applications, it is useful to draw associations between key characteristics of broadband and major application classes. For example, video-on-demand and other media streaming applications rely on the availability of downstream bandwidth, while information appliances require always-on service even though the bandwidth requirements may be low (see Table 3.1~.
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From page 84... ...
Furthermore, the composite broadband use in a home may be made up of multiple applications being used simultaneously by different family members. Faster General Internet Access and General Internet Applications Browsing and Related Activities The primary motivation today for residential broadband access is simply to improve the performance of the overall Web browsing experience.
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From page 85... ...
But many bulk file transfers are simply not practical without broadband. For example, downloading an entire application that might otherwise be delivered on a CD would require many hours over even the best dial-up connection a 60-megabyte (MB)
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From page 86... ...
2000. The Broadband Revolution: How Superfast Internet Access Changes Media Habits in American Households.
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From page 87... ...
Of those subscribers, 30 percent had broadband connections. According to Sony, which provides Everquest, availability and reliability are key requirements; latency is less important in this game than in the shooter variety; and bandwidth demand is moderated by a design that presents graphics on the client software and transmits only changes in graphics and in game and character stated Speed and Response-Time-Sensitive Internet Applications While activities based on Web browsing are generally improved by faster network connectivity, a small number of Internet-based applications are particularly sensitive to connection speed, latency, and response time.
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From page 88... ...
Static Image Delivery Several interesting video applications depend on the ability to deliver still photos or short video clips. The emergence of inexpensive albeit more expensive than their analog counterparts digital still and video cameras enables easy capture of photos.
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From page 89... ...
While there is much interest in broadband for video delivery, this chapter devotes considerable attention to audio as well, both because it is an important application and because understanding of audio applications is better grounded than that of video applications, Riven early efforts to deploy various audio applications. ~ J 1 J Audio Delivery Fundamentally, there are two ways to approach audio delivery a file can be downloaded to a local computer and then played, or the data can be streamed from a remote computer to the local computer, played more or less as it is received.
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From page 90... ...
For example, there are data streams that deliver information on sporting events. If a user runs one of these concurrently with an audio streaming feed of the sporting event, the inconsistencies may be noticeable for example, a play is reported on the data feed before it is heard over the audio feed.
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From page 91... ...
50 100 200 500 800 1,000 1,500 5,000 480 240 120 48 30 24 16 4.8 4,800 2,400 1,200 480 300 240 160 48 NOTE: A file size of 3 MB at low fidelity and 30 MB at CD-quality encoding is assumed. The sustained file transfer rate is assumed to be the same as the network bandwidth.
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From page 92... ...
quality using today's compression algorithms requires 128 kpbs.7 The gap may also be growing between what generally available bandwidth supports and state-of-the-art audio. Consumer electronics companies are currently beginning to promote a series of super-high-fidelity recording schemes using higher-capacity DVD (digital versatile disk)
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From page 93... ...
If one is to use a broadband connection to the Internet to substitute for conventional voice telephony conversations, a good handset will still be needed. It will, for example, be problematic to hold conversations having good sound quality using the PC analog of a speakerphone that is not close to the speaker's mouth, just as it is with conventional telephony.
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From page 94... ...
specialized appliances in each room that are connected to a computer that is in turn connected to the broadband network or (2) specialized appliances that directly connect to the broadband network, probably through a home network.
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From page 95... ...
. Intellectual property issues raise additional access-control issues: presumably, one would expect to be able to play music that one has licensed on any appliance within one's home, but this capability is somewhat at odds with both the digital rights management systems being proposed by the music industry (such as the Secure Digital Music Initiative, SDMI)
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From page 96... ...
In recent years, there has been growing interest in running telephony over general-purpose data networks, including the public Internet, instead of over the public telephone network. As an application of dial-up Internet service, Internet telephony arose as a less expensive alternative to conventional telephony.
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From page 97... ...
Another possibility is to use IP-based voice service part of the way, perhaps only on the local access link, and connect calls to the traditional voice telephone system through a gateway. Here again the key barriers to acceptance are not bandwidth but the integration of networkbased voice telephony with convenient handsets and "dialing" (call setup)
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From page 98... ...
These are the sorts of trade-offs between computing, communications, and storage that inevitably arise when new applications are being envisioned. Video Video applications considered broadly form a useful complement to the audio applications discussed above in terms of understanding what broadband connections may enable and what else other than mere con
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From page 99... ...
. Cameras are also an important technological enabler, as many of these video applications involve at least some in-home origination of video signals.
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From page 100... ...
But video permits a number of possible variants with interesting implications for both users and the broadband providers that carry these applications. These include:
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From page 101... ...
with the sound usually suppressed. Another source of multiple video streams could be a new class of video display devices video picture frame appliances that periodically download images for display from the Internet.
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From page 102... ...
. As with audio, interactive video applications require a streaming model.
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From page 103... ...
And all of this is complicated by models that stream video signals into the home through a single gateway that redistributes the signals to appropriate appliances using a home network. With all of these variables, it is hard to tabulate simple bandwidth requirements for various video applications.
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From page 104... ...
Telepresence for music is under consideration for concerts, studio production, and master classes.l4 Thus, the bandwidth requirements for telepresence are not limited by the number of people actively engaged in watching the video stream at any given moment. One can easily hypothesize the need for more video streams to be maintained to or from a location than the number of users at that location.
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From page 105... ...
. Telemetry applications rely critically on the always-on characteristics of broadband and the ability of broadband to multiplex many data streams (for example, to allow a medical device or an appliance to emit and transmit a data stream regardless of what else is going on over the broadband connection)
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From page 106... ...
The appeal is twofold: nimbleness that comes from not having to coordinate with any other party when rolling out 15Similar services have also been introduced, such as AIMster, which leverages AOL's Instant Messenger for file transfer. 16Intel has been encouraging such applications through the Intel Philanthropic Peer to Peer Program (see |
From page 107... ...
. There may also be an accompanying trend that, as speeds increase beyond the human limits of audio and video, the bandwidth demands become more symmetric.
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From page 108... ...
The emergence of a "Napster culture" suggests demand for the local hosting approach, but the future of this model is unclear, as is the future of peer-to-peer itself, in part because many of today's broadband services provide limited upstream capacity and because ISPs may discourage or prohibit users from running their own servers or consuming large amounts of upstream bandwidth. The balance might tip as significantly more upstream bandwidth is made available in the local access segment.
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From page 109... ...
Multiplexing Applications Demand in Homes Understanding how demand for networked capabilities and services will evolve is extraordinarily difficult. It is apparent that there are multiple broadband applications of interest and that some sort of composite of this is likely to typify future broadband use.
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From page 110... ...
In the committee's tune 2000 workshop, Andrew Cohill, speaking from the experience of the Blacksburg Electronic Village initiative in Blacksburg, Virginia, noted that the aggregate bandwidth demand as conventional applications (communications such as telephony and entertainment such as radio and television) migrate to the Internet would exceed the bandwidth available from today's DSL and cable services.
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From page 111... ...
However, some futurists, as well as some commercial appliance vendors, anticipate a demand that is more accurately bounded by the number of information appliances in the home autonomous consumers and producers of content that rely on the always-on capabilities of a broadband connection. Although the scenario of the dishwasher that independently calls the repairman for service has met with appropriate skepticism, there are already information appliances in the marketplace and in people's homes.
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From page 112... ...
One small study examined reactions of people working at home to a transition to DSL service and found overall satisfaction based on the increase in their productivity attributed to higher-speed connectivity; people also noted that the productivity benefit depended on whether other homebased workers with whom they collaborated also had such connectivity.23 That kind of comment underscores the potential for qualitative change in an activity from widespread availability of a capability change not visible when availability is unevenly distributed among a population, such as a group of teleworkers. Distributed education, like distributed work, involves remote access to information and communications.
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From page 113... ...
All of these ideas involve taking advantage of a second screen that the user can selectively use for added experiences. Importantly, all these applications involve constraints on tolerable latency for the data streams relative to the primary video streams.
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From page 114... ...
Thus, it is important to recognize that community networks have both infrastructural and content dimensions. SOCIAL FACTORS AND IMPACTS OF BROADBAND There is much potential for future applications that enrich or complement traditional content and communications channels, but excitement about them should be tempered by an appraisal of the time frame in which these applications could be realized and the nontechnical obstacles that retard their deployment.
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From page 115... ...
He suggested that at least 10 million households would need to use broadband before meaningful content would emerge, and he noted that cable experience shows that serving 50 million customers is key to lining up advertisers (with online services, a top rating by Jupiter Media Metrix had become key to advertiser interest by 2000~.26 Intellectual property rights issues are another large factor the interests and holdings of broadband providers, users, and rights holders are not necessarily aligned. The 2000-2001 rise of Internet radio raised a set of issues related to content use fees, and the popularity of Napster and other content-sharing technologies heightened rights holders' concerns about control over their intellectual property, making intellectual property more prominent in the development of business plans.27 Finally, although content availability affects demand for broadband, one should not underestimate the volume and value of customer-provided content.
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From page 116... ...
2000. The Broadband Revolution: How Superfast Internet Access Changes Media Habits in American Households.
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From page 117... ...
Telemetry and monitoring applications can enhance health care delivery. Basic communications and telepresence applications can help keep children and elderly parents connected.
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From page 118... ...
Different business models are needed to serve the lower half, and observable business models for broadband seem to focus on the upper, morelucrative half.32 Of course, it is reasonable to expect that during the transition from broadband, even people who could shift will not do so at once, and those who do so first value the capabilities more and will pay more. The picture painted in this chapter, of multidimensional change in household technology and activities, suggests that raising the floor for residential broadband implies addressing total and life-cycle costs.
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From page 119... ...
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