In 2005, the number of reported Internet users was 973 million people representing about 15.2% of the world’s population with the highest penetration in North America at 68.2%and the lowest in Africa with 2.7%.[xiii]  The importance of the Internet as a worldwide resource is reflected in the fact that the number of users in emerging economies has grown in one year by over 400% in Africa, over 300% in the Middle East and Latin America and almost 200% in Asia.

 
While the debate in Africa may focus on increasing the penetration of Internet access, the attention on North America and in all the OECD countries is centred on the provision of higher-bandwidth Internet services.  Since most of the major broadband developments are occurring in OECD countries, they represent a good benchmark for analysing trends.  The OECD reported that in June 2005, the number of broadband subscribers in the 30 OECD countries had grown in the six months by 15% to137 million representing a penetration of 11.8 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.[xiv]  The breakdown of broadband technologies in use is 61.2% DSL, 32% cable modem and 6.8% other technologies (e.g. fibre optics, LAN, satellite and fixed wireless).  

 
DSL is the leading platform in 28 of the OECD countries with cable modem being the dominant platform in Canada and the United States.  There has been growth in the use of fibre optics in some countries, most notably Japan with approximately 2.5 million subscribers[xv], but the legacy technologies of DSL and cable modems are likely to remain the dominant technology favoured by the incumbent industry players in most OECD countries.

 
In referring to broadband Internet services, a distinction is often made between Current Generation Broadband (CGB) and Next Generation Broadband (NGB).  Like the definition of broadband itself, there is no universally accepted definition used by all countries.  However, it is interesting to note that in the early 1980s, the term ‘broadband’ was almost universally used within informed telecom-technical circles to denote a symmetrical bandwidth of at least 2Mbps (i.e. the minimum capable of handling full motion video).

 
Since then, the telecommunications industry, through its broadly concerted policy around the world of extending the economic life of the local copper network through the deployment of DSL technologies rather than the deployment of new technologies such as wireless or fibre, has effectively ‘redefined’ the term ‘broadband’ in everyday vocabulary to means something far less.  This has resulted in the need to qualify the term broadband by ‘current’ or ‘next’ generation.  As is addressed in the Appendix, the term ‘next generation’ is something of a misnomer in that it implies a smooth, migratory path towards it from ‘current’ generation.  That is not the case.  We therefore prefer to use the term ‘next genus’ rather than ‘next generation’ and will do so from hereon in this Study.

 
CGB is normally defined in terms of the existing suite of DSL, cable modem, fixed wireless, and satellite services capable of providing broadband access at downstream speeds ranging from about 256 kbps to 3 Mbps. The general consensus about NGB is that next genus networks must provide simultaneously multiple HDTV programs, very high-speed data in both directions, and high quality voice connections. As HDTV alone requires a bandwidth of about 20 Mbps, NGB is usually defined in terms of a network that is capable of providing bandwidth in a range of between 30 Mbps and 100 Mbps.

 
Although fibre is currently the only technology platform that can provide these transmission rates, refinements to existing DSL technology like ADSL2+ have resulted in bandwidth of 24 Mbps.  As a result, many of the incumbent telecommunications companies in Europe and North America believe that NGB services can be provided over the existing copper infrastructure.  However, at some point in the future, these markets are likely to discover in an increasing ‘peer-to-peer’ world that ‘symmetry’ is just as important as raw bandwidth and also, that the severe degradation of DSL bandwidth as the distance from the local central office increases (which itself is related to bandwidth) is creating a new ‘digital divide’ within local communities rather than between them.  

 
In the case of the cable industry, technical improvements, such as DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) 2.0 can provide an upstream throughput of up to 30 Mbps[xvi] – still far less that many are now arguing will be required in the future.

 
Irrespective of which technology is being deployed by the telecommunications or cable industry, it is, without exception, not currently being deployed on a full open access basis.

REFERENCES