US cities will enjoy increasing access to higher speed
broadband,leaving rural areas stuck in the internet slow
lane, a report from market analysts Gartner
claims.
The report,
Emerging Technology Analysis: Ultra-High-Speed Residential
Broadband Internet, Global Consumer Services, said urbanised
areas will benefit from download speeds of 50Mbps and faster while
rural and less-populated areas will fall behind. This will open up
significant opportunities for application developers and service
providers that will change the way consumers experience video, and
how they communicate, analysts said.
Fernando Elizalde, a principal research analyst at Gartner,
predicted that where countries lagged, governments would come under
pressure to use public funds to upgrade broadband
infrastructure.
Fernando
Elizalde said speed was a defining competitive advantage for
network operators. This would encourage them to build faster
networks to retain customers and attract new ones. This would
happen first where populations were densest.
"Those markets where there are multiple carriers targeting the
same customers or where there is strong telecom carrier versus
cable television broadband competition, will move fastest," he
said.
Fast downloads or
streaming video and film would drive the acceleration of
network speeds because people were prepared to pay for such
content. The distribution of user-generated content through e-mail,
social network sites, and video-sharing websites would also push
demand for faster network speeds, he said.
Elizalde said governments could stimulate demand for bandwidth
through state-sponsored broadband projects such as telemedicine,
consumer telepresence and high-definition television.
Elizalde said factors that could slow the roll-out of high speed
broadband included a lack of applications for which consumers would
pay, lack of certainty over network sharing regulations, the
possible need to upgrade the wiring in many houses, and the effect
of fast wireless technologies such
Long
Term Evolution (LTE).
As the
US struggles to define broadband and open the $7.2bn kitty to
extend broadband access to unserved areas, Gartner analysts predict
ultra high speed residential broadband will create a bandwidth
divide over the next three to five years.