Bring on the bandwidth
This is according to Ewan Sutherland, former Executive Director of INTUG, who reiterated that world class broadband is becoming an important ingredient in an economically prosperous country.
By world class broadband Sutherland said that he means affordable, high speed internet in the order of 1 Gbps. He added that mobile services like WiFi, WiMax and 3G form part of world class broadband services and that bundled or flat rated services should be commonplace.
Sutherland referred to countries like France where one can find a triple play service which includes a 20 Mbps broadband Internet connection, television and free local, national and even international calls for a flat rate of under R 300-00 per month.
He also pointed out that countries should follow Hong Kong’s example where their 1 Gbps service is already available at around R 1400-00 per month, their standard 100 Mbps symmetrical service costs just over R 200-00 per month.
Many critics may consider a 1 Gbps residential service to be overkill, but it is in fact a massive driver of innovation. While many telco’s may restrict or shape bandwidth to limit the use of bandwidth intensive services, some Asian telco’s are giving users ample bandwidth and encouraging them to make use of it.
Through analyzing usage patterns and online behavior, especially of high end users, service providers can establish what these high bandwidth environments make possible and start to develop services based on this research. These services will form an important part of future revenue for these telco’s, replacing the lost revenue from traditional voice services.
Sutherland, like many other experts, said that competition is the only real way to ensure growth in the broadband arena. Without competition it is likely that incumbents will delay the rollout of flat rated broadband based services.
Sutherland advised local loop unbundling, the effective use of available spectrum, allowing self-provisioning and more open access to international access as drivers of competition in the local telecoms arena.
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