It was at an IT industry symposium I attended back in 1996 where
some American network rep boldly stated, "Within two years, WAN
bandwidth will be free and every hotel room will have 2mbps or
more", writes Steve Broadhead, director of
Broadband-Testing
Labs.
Yeah, right. Had he made the same claim in 2006, he would still
be wrong, albeit closer to the truth. The one certainty is that
although
WAN/internet bandwidth is increasingly plentiful and getting
lower per megabyte, it certainly isn't free. A key element here is
that most of the "bargain" bandwidth/service packages have been
aimed at the consumer, rather than the business. It seems like
anything that is labelled "business class" comes with an automatic
surcharge. However, prices have fallen dramatically from a few
years ago, and feeds to the all-important branch/satellite offices
are more affordable than ever, thanks to the development of ADSL,
now at "2+", the slow emergence of
Carrier Ethernet and the ongoing "promise" of wireless
WAN options. Not to mention digital mobile - ah, too late.
The question is, can you take a service that is priced for the
consumer and apply it to business? For example, in the UK you have
providers such as Talk Talk offering a package of 8mbps downlink
speed, 40Gbytes of data transfer a month and unlimited national
voice calls for about £15 a month. Or do you even have to? Business
packages appear to be getting more competitive. Phil Baker, ISV
director with Dexterra, a
company that provides the "glue" for enabling mobile applications,
sees data costs and bundled tariffs falling significantly in the
mobile space as well as wired and broadband wireless. But he
believes it is the applications and their smart use, rather than
pure bandwidth costs, that is driving the market, arguing that
smartly constructed business applications don't need speeds greater
than 3G as long as the coverage is good and the collisions or
packet loss are not too high.
"The telcos and device manufacturers need to get their money
back on the 3G licence costs and any driver of content, consumer
[Facebook, social networking] or business [service, sales process,
inspection process] will help them do it," said Baker. "I am sure
this is why
Nokia has now bought and open-sourced Symbian, for
example."
Baker believes that in terms of speeds and feeds, the key is not
the carrier but a feature function battle between hardware vendors
which is, as ever, consumer-oriented.
"You only have to look at why and how the
iPhone 3G is making such a splash," he said. "The interesting
thing about the iPhone is that it will sell due to great
ergonomics."
This is where it gets interesting, as the consumer argument
spills over into the enterprise. Baker sees Apple playing on the
convergence story - use the device on the tube on the way to work
and then keep using it in work as a pure business device. Likewise,
it's a case of getting away from technology hang-ups. Baker sees
the people that mobile software vendors sell to as industry experts
in their chosen field, but not necessarily mobility experts. So
although some of the more mature buyers can make the leap, others
are still limited by their preconceptions.
For those situations - let's talk classic enterprise software -
where bandwidth is still insufficient, the likes of DBAM and
Riverbed are providing application acceleration to improve the
situation. So, if we forget about the technology and focus on the
applications, the picture changes. Bandwidth costs are falling,
applications and end devices are becoming smarter. So why are we
all still spending a large part of our lives driving, sitting on
trains or flying around, rather than using that network
infrastructure we've bought into?
That's the question that Joe Dorfman, CEO of
Video3, a UK start-up
focused on internet conferencing and collaboration services, is
asking - does the availability of greater bandwidth mean the
reinvention of
video conferencing? Certainly, from an online training and
education perspective, there is every reason to consider using
broadband connectivity rather than National Express or GWR. Dorfman
says there are products out there that are beginning to deliver
serious benefits, both to the corporate and public sectors.
Generically, they are known as interactive web-casting and desktop
conferencing and collaboration.
The bottom line is to accept that bandwidth is now affordable
and largely sufficient. Don't get hung up on the technology and
focus on applications that optimise your time and costs. Sounds
obvious, I know, but looking at the typical UK traffic patterns, it
clearly hasn't sunk in yet.