Forum Moderators: open
Many have been looking forward to a broadband future where 8 seconds is plenty of time to check cookies against the Customer Relations Database, download a stunning customized page, maybe include a banner ad targeted specifically to our visitor's profile, and welcome our guests into a site with some high impact audio/video multimedia, movable 3-D product views, etc.
According to John Dvorak of PC Magazine, we'll likely be waiting a lot longer than we hoped for widely available broadband. Time to settle in to the dialup modem scene for a lot longer, and that means an average of 34 Kbps.
Full article [zdnet.com]
It is easy for designers and decision-makers in designed-for-internet environments, who talk mainly with colleagues who have the same, to assume that broadband is becoming standard.
The key is that broadband growth is limited, at least for the short to middle term. It only applies to cities, and those with the telco sturcture to support it, and those that can afford it.
Some increasingly popular activities can never use broadband, at least in the foreseeable future. eg: laptop users who are travelling, rural areas, developing countries, cities without the advantages such as Seoul of the infrastructure to support it etc.
Then ad into the formulae the increasing growth of wireless, mobile, and remote accesses, where broadband is not available of course.
Broadband access will continue to grow very strongly, until it starts to approach a "ceiling" which is lower than most people assume. Basing your design strategy on the continued rates of growth in broadband access at present is a recipe for disappointment.
Some have mentioned that yahoo's popularity, that part of it based on its fast delivery of pages, will lessen as broadband kicks in and loading time reduces the competitive advantage. Maybe for the limited broadband access users, but not for the broad internet as a whole. I don't see broadband becoming a standard, as CNN loves to say when they dont really know the answer, .."any time soon"...
The other point I would like to make is whether the extra pwoer provided by broadband is really used efficiently. If it is mainly used, as I see now, for providing very heavy graphics and such, the actual increase in actual information is almost neglible, mainly we see prettier and "boastier" pages. It may mirror the increase in memory and processor speed, which brought us speaking paperclips, top heavy help files and lots of crap to MS applications for example. I get very little extra done with 64 MGS of speed and fast speends now in Word and Access for example that i did with 2 MGS and a 3x processor several years ago.
The real advantage of the extra resources is lost significantly by applications becoming less designed for efficiency and targeted for the job in hand.
Methinks we will see the same for increase in Internet acess speeds. Apart from a very few applications like big database searches, video delivery, and downloading lots of files/info at the same time through simultaneous connections, the most popular, useful and underrated application, like email, has no need for braodband. Yet people will continue to fill in wahtever extra "space" they have by emailing bloated and useless "HTML email" and the like.
From a users perspective, I see uch less advantage to higher speeds than the cost involved in obtaining it. Perhaps only 3 to 4% of the time I spend on line would be significantly lowered by braodband. Really, who really NEEDS to watch high resolution big screen videoclips on the Internet anyway? Its possibly broadband's killer application, but I think people's interest in watching the same is based on novelty more than anything else. When the novelty wears off, its a lot of monet spent for very little return.
Today's designs should cater for the slowest dial-ups, while they are still a significant proportion of a website's traffic.
The best, fully-functional website on a high speed connection is nothing without it's traffic volume, which may come from relatively low speed dial-ups.
Messenger = shot. Statistics = damned.
By 2001 we were all supposed to be living like the Jetsons.
Don't know if that's true, but it is a thing that makes me go hmmm...
I think putting these users, who will, surely eventually, if they are not now, be in their millions, out the picture has to be a bad idea.
1. Only use broadband optimised sites if your product/service and target market absolutely requires it. And even then, consider providing several "light" alternatives for critical pages.
2. Increasing broadband access is good overall not so much becuase it provides the ability to design more complex heavy pages, but because it increases speed for both simple and heavy sites! Only optimizing for broadband will DECREASE your accessibility/usability.
3. I never mentioned it before for fear of being branded a "conspiracy theorist" but the point Tedster brings forward is important. The lower upload rates turns the web into a more one way medium. This is a key way that publihsers and the existing information elite can protect their interests. You can download as much of our content as you can really fast, but it is much slower to upload your content! Its not really a conspiracy theory but a reality. The existing publishing oligarchy/monopoly could not let this amazing medium for the low cost and free exchange of information to continue on for much longer. Information (and especially the distribution of it) is power. Learning point? Expect the Web to be monopolised by a few traditional publishing/interests in future, and adapt to it. To expect it to continue to be an empowering medium for new players is naive. That start up function of the Web started passing as soon as commercial bodies started splurging money on this nascent technology, and increased the "entry price" for the ordinary person not in the club...
Broadband in the UK falls into 3 main categories :
1) Cable modem (NTL or TeleWest)
2) DSL
3) Full-blown leased line access
1) Cable modem access has its own problems, as although it generally offers better access speed than a PTSN-based dial-up connection, theres no further room for expansion. Broadband will (eventually) surpass it, and it will effectively become obsolete. You are also fairly tied to a given provider, and you can only choose from providers who have made the hardware commitment to providing local access in your geographic area.
Due to some fairly uneven take-up rates, and wildly optomistic revenue projections by the cable providers, its not quite the cash cow that they had expected, leading to lower investment in after-sales service than you might expect. These services aren't all that reliable in some areas either, and where they are, other problems dent consumer confidence in the service (example : NTL access cuts off after 2 hours AUTOMATICALLY on certain packages. Do you have ANY idea how anoyying that is when you're just about to score an ultra-kill with WorldStats on?).
If anything goes wrong with your service, unless you're a big corporate client with clout, you neednt expect to see anything done about it this side of Christmas, and as for calling the customer service departments... I know people who work for one of the players in this area, and I daren't repeat some of the stories I've heard for fear of legal action
2) DSL : ADSL is the big noise here, or rather the lack of ADSL is. Several competitors to BT had been rather hoping that OFTEL (our telecomms regulator) was going to force BT to provide them with large quantities of ADSL connections at wholesale prices, and went ahead signing up consumers.
However, the number of subscriptions was rather large, and the number of BT engineers who are actually qualified to fit ADSL equipment is rather small (anyone remember Project Sovereign and its descendants? You know, where BT offered early retirement to anyone who knew how to actually do anything), coupled with the usual (for BT)admin errors has left the rate of connection pitifully low. Add that to the ... unusual methods that OFTEL forced on the industry to provide the connections (BT engineers do EVERY connection. The other telcos have made NO investment in this technology, they get BT engineers assigned to do their connections for them, and sort out any and all problems that arise. And they do), and the currently rather small number of exchanges that even could support ADSL lines, and you know its going to be a while before this hits critical mass
3) Leased line : this all works fine, as long as you've got around £30,000 (entry price) to implement it, and about the same again in wages for people to look after it. Not really a "mass-market" solution for the little guys
killerstreams (lease lines) start at about £3000 for a 64k managed service with 16ip's, and the price doubles propotionately with the speed. The DSL is very expensive when you want x amount of ip's too host (BT won't allow you - w****RS), however, a new company Onque have been granted access to BT ADSL monopoly and are offering 2mb 10/1 for a similar price with as many ip's (hostable - so they say - sware blind even) as you can legitamitlly justify. The only other option is fibre-optics, we looked into it, NTL suggested that it would cost £15,000 for 2mb dedicated, though when we ask if we could have it they said no, because they would have to dig up the road, 50 metres, one days digging, we offered to pay for it as we have a lease line and two isdn's and 4 telephone lines, so in effect it would have been the same cost. They seemed to think that the average joe punter is more valuable and welcome to have it - the funny things is that mr and mrs average ain't got a glue that it exists outside their front door.
Sorry - not the place to grind my axe.
Chiyo, thanks for pointing me to this discussion some good points made, my brother who i work with has built an isp (final touches stage) so i shall take into account the dialup modem, as i use one from home myself.
