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Broadband Benefits: Entertainment
Excerpt from the Baller-Herbst Report
While some may view entertainment as a luxury that is unworthy of serious government attention, it is undeniably a critical part of the broadband picture. In fact, entertainment is probably the leading driver of broadband deployment today. In this section, we emphasize the entertainment-related benefits of broadband, focusing on three key applications: broadband video, social networking, and gaming. Before doing so, however, we wish to make clear that entertainment is not the only use for these applications. To the contrary, they are also widely used for business, social, and other purposes, including several of the purposes discussed in the previous sections.
Broadband Video
To the major communications companies, particularly telephone companies, the dominant driver of broadband deployment is television, particularly high-definition television:
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Video is by far the largest driver. ... Starting with sub-100-Mbit/sec services in 2010, [operators] expect a tenfold increase in demand per decade, reaching as much as 10 Gbits/sec per home by 2030. Consumer demand for more high-definition channels, added video streams, and time-shifted television has network operators scrambling to stay ahead of their subscribers’ bandwidth appetite. Today’s access networks, even PONs [Passive Optical Networks], will not support tomorrow’s needs.
...Bandwidth needed per home is more than quadrupling from today’s requirements. In the not-so-distant future, demand per home will increase from about 30 Mbits/sec per subscriber to more than 125 Mbits/sec. Today’s GEPON and GPON technologies that deliver 1 Gbit/sec and 2.5 Gbits/sec, respectively, with a 32-split topology are adequate for today. But as more HDTV channels and video services are added to the service lineup, today’s PONs [Passive Optical Networks] will fall short. With 64 splits, next-generation PON systems will need to supply 8.1-Gbit/sec payloads to meet the demand. Even if the next-generation topology only matches today’s 32 splits per PON, more than 4 Gbits/sec will be required for residential deployments, which is well beyond today’s PON capabilities.
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While traditional television programming (whether or not in high definition) is likely to be for some time the dominant driver for broadband deployment, it is not the only kind of broadband video that is making headway in the market. One other kind is video-to-computer service, such as YouTube clips and on-demand streamed movies from NetFlix and television shows from Hulu. Another kind is video conference calls – called
“telepresence” when rendered in extremely high quality. Both of these other kinds of video service are growing rapidly and will consume ever-increasing quantities of bandwidth.
In a recent article in USA TODAY, Leslie Cauley, quoting Phillipe Morin, a division manager at Nortel, described in especially memorable language the coming explosion of bandwidth-gobbling video-to-computer service:
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Video is the biggest driver of bandwidth consumption, by far. Online video-viewing soared 66% in the USA in February from a year earlier, according to market tracker ComScore. Video site YouTube reflects the trend. It fields 100 million video downloads and 65 million video uploads daily. And a high-definition video-streaming option is on the way. Once that happens, high-definition video will go mainstream, Morin predicts.
The problem: High-definition video is the Humvee of broadband, guzzling five times as much capacity as regular video. Once high-definition video takes off, bandwidth consumption, now at a record high, could blow into the stratosphere, Morin says.
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Social Networking
According to a new study by Data monitor, “social networks” have grown “explosively” over the last few years, reaching some 230 million members by the end of 2007 and generating an estimated $965 million in revenues from social-networking services in 2007. Revenues are expected to grow to $2.4 billion by 2012.
126 The following is a succinct description of social networks and Web 2.0:
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Social media is one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0, a term used to describe the set of technologies, applications, and other elements defining the current stage of evolution of the Internet. The term encompasses the change from a “flat” web model to a highly dynamic mix of rich applications. These latest technologies enable a much higher participatory role for users in the generation of information content and a new level of interactivity of users with information and among themselves, among other features. Social media involves a wide range of technologies and services, including blogs (Blogger, Blogflux, etc.); wikis (Wikipedia, Wikia, Wetpaint, etc); social networking sites (MySpace, facebook.com, gather.com, etc.); video and picture sharing sites (YouTube, Flickr, Google Video, etc.); social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, Digg, reddit, etc.); chat services (Yahoo!Chat, Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Gmail chat, etc.); virtual worlds (Second Life, Active Worlds, There, etc.); as well as podcasts, forums, and others.
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Another noteworthy phenomenon is the emergence of “virtual worlds.” According to Susan Tenby and Beth Kanter, “[b]logs, wikis, and podcasts are just a few of the burgeoning tools nonprofits use to connect, engage constituents, and collaborate. All have revolutionized the way people interact online, but a new 3-D, virtual world called Second Life is taking things one step further.”
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Linden Lab’s Second Life is an immersive online world where nearly 850,000 (and growing) residents – also called “avatars” – can purchase their own property on land allotments, interact with other avatars, build anything imaginable, and buy and sell products and services. But unlike reality, Second Life avatars can also fly, make copies of certain products (say, a t-shirt) without any new materials, or take on [a] completely different form – a fox, a space alien, or a hybrid of the two. The options are limited only by your imagination.
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Online Gaming
Online gaming is a major driver of demand for bandwidth. “Online gaming needs no venue except the seat of a PC or a TV. And, it is going to eat up a great deal of bandwidth and needs to compete with IPTV and VoIP as another bandwidth-hungry application clogging the Internet.”
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Gamers want the fastest pipes around so they won’t lag behind their competitors in “massively multiplayer online games” which involve “hundreds or thousands of players online simultaneously,” who “cooperate and compete with each other on a grand scale.”
141 And through broadband new capabilities are made possible, like live voice communications between players.
According to a recent report, online gaming is a substantial global business now and will quadruple by 2011, driven in part by the increasing availability of broadband:
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Online gaming is big, and with the spike in broadband Internet subscribers and all three next-generation systems making it a major part of their strategy, it only looks to be getting bigger. But how much bigger?
About four times bigger than it is today, according to industry-research firm DFC Intelligence. In its latest report, the firm has pegged the worldwide online market to effectively quadruple in the next five years, going from $3.4 billion last year to more than $13 billion in 2011.
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Who are these players? In the United States, according to NPD Group, about 42 percent of the population played online video games in 2007. About 40 percent of these online gamers were between two and 17 years old (children aged six through twelve drove this category), while children between the ages of two through twelve accounted for over 25 percent of online gaming, and 18-24 year-olds were responsible for 10 percent.
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As to adults, Parks Associates reports that 34 percent of adult Internet users in the United States played online games on a weekly basis, compared with 29 percent who watched short online videos and 19 percent who visited social networking sites with the same frequency.
144 The Electronic Software Association adds that 67 percent of gamers were heads of households and averaged 33 years of age.
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