Doesn't this just tell us about today's users and their usage requirements? Not what tomorrow's users will require? If the premise is users are content with very low speed broadband now and for ever then I'm going to reject that in the longer term.
Absolutely right - it shows today's requirements, not tomorrow's. But it happens to show that today's requirements seem to fit healthily within the scope of the broadband networks we in the UK have built (by VM and Openreach largely) for today's users. That today's users aren't really demanding more ... yet.
Tomorrow is indeed another matter, and there's a fine balance to be played between upgrading an old network for tomorrow vs just plumping for fibre. The
Nesta report on FTTH cost vs benefit illustrates this, with the quote below taken from this report.
Bandwidth matters, at some point in the decades to come we probably will see a "sweet spot" when we've essentially run out of things to do with our connections - but I don't think 12/1 is that sweet spot(or 25/5, or 50/20).
The decision about what upgrade is worthwhile, where, and when, is a tricky one ... partly dependent on whether that "sweet spot" exists, and what generation of hardware hits it. My
recent post over in the nearby thread shows some of the "guesses" at tomorrow's needs.
I suspect that 40/10 or 50/20 might turn out to be a sweet spot, for some people, for quite some time. But certainly not everyone ... where some might indeed require full fibre.
For the latter, I'm quite happy believing that such users should pay for this themselves, as a higher connection cost. But it should be a choice they can make - so we need a proper product for this (some variant of FTTPoD) that people can reliably order.
I noticed Sky's desktop Now TV app was pulling 6.5-8Mb for a basic stream(720p?) now if three people in a household were watching TV that would be around 24Mb/s and we're still really at the start for Internet TV(more users, much higher resolutions to come, etc)
If NowTV are using that much, then there's a good bet it is H.264. Perhaps you'll be happier at
the advent of HEVC, where 720p might reduce to around 3Mbps.
Being "at the start for internet TV" is a hard thing to measure. I'd bet that, for any one household (which is where access speed matters), that house has either not started yet, or has engaged with catchup TV only, or has fully engaged with Netflix, Amazon prime, NowTV etc; IMO a house consuming 3 NowTV streams simultaneously is *far* past the start.
For the country as a whole (where total bandwidth matters, on the core network), we probably are indeed at the start - and core volumes will only grow. The NBN article makes that distinction clear: where average line speed has gone down slightly, the nationwide core volume has doubled.
The good thing about being at the start is that we've further to go down the route of improving the codec too.
And what about cloud services? Backup for example, I use a portable 8TB HD(used, then moved off site) rather than cloud storage because it's currently faster and cheaper.
Actually, I tend to think of "cloud backup" as one of the worst examples of cloud services. To me, it has the feel of a temporary "I don't really trust the cloud" service, "so I'm keeping all my documents in the house". It is the first cloud service people think about ... because they haven't properly thought about putting all their files out there yet.
When you trust the cloud properly, then your files/documents are all out on the cloud always ... and the transactions are small ones each time you bring a copy into the house to read/stream/edit, and send a copy out of the house when you write/save it. Backup is then a matter of being an intra-cloud service.
Essentially what I'm getting at is that although we're not at the beginning of broadband use, the world has a way to go before we no longer find ways to exploit bandwidth(even if we only make proper use of full bandwidth in "bursts" as and when necessary).
I agree that we will continue to find ways to exploit the bandwidth.
However, new services we've seen so far don't really do anything to create new types of data. We still have small messages, or documents to read, or voice conversations, or produce/consume video ... new variations on these themes, certainly, but no new types. So I find it hard to believe that a household will need real-time bandwidth to consume much more than a few decent quality video streams.
Whatever the new service, it'll be hard for 4 people to consume more than 4 video streams until we learn to use our 2 eyes independently. So I think N streamed video services is still going to be our edge case.
