The telecoms and Internet strategy consultants over at Telco 2.0 have written a very interesting article with their take on the future of broadband. They're talking about worldwide trends rather than just the UK but there are some intriguing lines of thought. In particular Telco 2.0 make some observations on the PlusNet approach to Traffic Management:
The ISP product suffers from severe economic problems. A few users are diverging in their usage from the rest, driving capital and operational cost. These users are different from day to day, so you can’t shed them. Attempts at traffic shaping to manage cost only work with a policy of ‘radical honesty’, such as that from PlusNet in the UK. Retail prices are lowering to the point where additional usage is being priced below the cost of transit for that traffic.
There are some predictions about further consolidation in the Telco and ISP market with only the biggest suppliers surviving. In addition the widely recognised 'battle for the living room' is predicted to get more fierce in the coming 12-18 months. Only yesterday Apple reaffirmed their plans with iTunes delivering HD movies to the AppleTV set-top box. So what do we think? Well, we're going to publish our plans for 2008 in the next few weeks as we have done for the past few years, and we'll share a few thoughts on how we see the market evolving and how we're going to improve our service for you. What do you think? Why not comment on this article or contribute in our forums?
