Cloudy outlook for the NBN - but that's good news

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 09 February 2012 13:02

A New Zealand study into the potential applications and demand for high-speed broadband services has concluded that cloud computing services for consumers could be a major driver.

"Consumer cloud computing will be a major driver of fast broadband. Significant growth in the demand for cloud computing services is expected over the next several years," it says. "Cloud computing may change the way that consumers use ICT, including their use of high speed broadband."

The outlook for the SMB market is not so good. "Most SMEs consider themselves to be well served by current broadband services," it concludes.

"There is some level of interest in the new services that high speed broadband may deliver; but there is no strong demand at present for any of the potential applications surveyed."

The study 'Future with High Speed Broadband: Opportunities for New Zealand' is the third and final released by the country's trade regulator, the Commerce Commission in the run up to its The Future with High Speed Broadband: Opportunities for New Zealand conference to be held on 20 and 21 February in Auckland.

To compile the study the Commission got Roy Morgan and Nielsen to carry out surveys, respectively on consumers' and SMEs' interest in high-speed broadband services.

For the consumer market, the report argues that: "Many consumers already use some form of cloud computing application today. Facebook, Twitter and other social networking applications are examples of cloud applications...Likewise, internet-based email (eg, Yahoo! mail and G-Mail) and Flickr are cloud applications....

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