Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 22 July 2008 10:10
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
The Australian Government is promising at least 12Mbps and BT in the UK, up to 100Mbps, but in the hyperconnected household of there could be multiple devices and applications all demanding, and creating data at these rates, and there are many differing views as to what is the best way to deliver this bandwidth.
British Telecom announced on 15 July that it would invest £1.5 billion ($A3.1b) to roll out fibre-based broadband to as many as 10 million homes by 2012 with top speeds of up to 100Mbps. These speeds would be achieved primarily with VDSL from fibre to the node, but FTTP would be used in greenfield developments.
This of course is way ahead of what the Rudd Government is promising with its National Broadband Network, if it ever happens (which to my mind is by no means certain). But interestingly this is not fast enough for some people, albeit those with vested interests. Jorge Blasco, CEO of DS2, says: "BT's announcement...has been superseded by recent developments, such as the BBC iPlayer, that have highlighted the need to meet immediate consumer demands for high-speed and high-capacity broadband. The need...has been growing exponentially in the UK - and most industry analysts have predicted will happen as soon as 2009!"
Who is he to hold forth you ask? Well DS2, a Spanish company, happens to a world leader in developing chipsets for broadband communications over powerlines. There is a good chance if you have this technology in your home, it has DS2 chips inside.
DS2 says that its next generation powerline products will operate at a peak data rate of 400Mbps and "will enable the development of new HD-capable multimedia applications, such as multi-channel HD-IPTV delivery or multi-room PVR." There will be only three ways to get all this content into your home: download at low speed, real-time streaming and carrying it in on some hard storage medium. No prizes for guessing which one consumers will most demand.
Clearly without comparable bandwidth coming into the home the market for DS2's 400Mbps technology will be reduced, so it is in Blasco's interest to blast BT's plans. And he can do so pretty directly because his company is not going to be involved in supplying the technology that will enable BT to rollout its FTTx network.
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