Research on drivers for ultra broadband services among international experts

The use of the Internet has completely altered since its introduction a few decades ago. Where functionalities used to be limited to basic emailing, surfing simple websites and the like, the Internet has now grown up. More and more sophisticated applications are launched and ever more people join the Internet broadband community. This has resulted in more and more bandwidth being demanded. According to some, this ever growing bandwidth demand can be resolved by deploying Fiber To The Home (FTTH) in which optical fiber is rolled out up to each and every living or working space. Nevertheless, even if fiber is indeed able to meet this increasing bandwidth demand, it is known from past experience that mere technological excellence hardly ever convinces users to switch to a new technology (see e.g. the failure of WAP and DAB). Users will only migrate if a new technology can provide them with new or improved services, in this case services that are only possible or at the very least run better over fiber. Since it is ultimately the user that decides whether or not to adopt, this study explicitly adopted a user-oriented perspective. An international panel of twenty-one experts from seven different countries was consulted to give their view on user benefits and services of FTTH. This represented a first, qualitative and non-representative exploration of the issue. Experts especially pinpoint video applications as promising. Some augmented video applications are indeed deemed very interesting, although this study also suggests that both their technological feasibility and mass market adoption could lag behind. While in the long run, these services might indeed be convincing, three services in particular might make a difference in the short term, namely online content management, desktop sharing and on demand streaming.