Evolution of Broadband Services
Broadband communications consists of the technologies and equipment required to deliver packet-based digital voice, video, and data services to end users. Broadband affords end users high-speed, always-on access to the Internet while affording service providers the ability to offer value-added services to increase revenues. Due to the growth of the Internet, there has been tremendous buildout of high-speed, inter-city communications links that connect population centers and Internet service providers' (ISPs) points of presence (PoPs) around the world. This buildout of the backbone infrastructure or core network has occurred primarily via optical transport technology.

Broadband access technologies are being deployed to address the bandwidth bottleneck for the "last mile," the connection of homes and small businesses to this infrastructure. Though residential broadband adoption is rising sharply—according to a March 2003 Pew Research study, it rose 50% from March 2002 to March 2003—the rollout of broadband access technologies to residences is still in the early stages. According to the same study, 16% of U.S. residential Internet subscribers have broadband access to their home.

As broadband access becomes available to home users, it is truly changing the way people work and play. Users tired of waiting for Web pages to download using dial-up modem Internet access are signing up for broadband access services. What they find is that not only does broadband access result in fast Web surfing due to higher connection speeds, but it also has several other benefits. The higher connection speeds enable multimedia applications such as real-time Internet audio streaming, posting and displaying digital photographs for friends and family, viewing video clips of news events and movie trailers, and taking virtual tours of hotels and resort areas before making reservations. Because broadband access is always on, unlike dial-up access, there is no wait to connect to the Internet. Thus, people with broadband access tend to leave their personal computers (PCs) turned on and use the Internet for more mundane tasks such as checking television listings and looking up phone numbers-tasks that were not worth the bother when a slow dial-up connection first had to be established. The presence of broadband access also means that the telephone line is no longer tied up when accessing the Internet. This saves the need to purchase a second phone line and enables the user to talk to someone on the phone while accessing information on the Web.

Another important aspect of broadband access to the home is that it allows people to telecommute effectively by providing a similar environment as when they are physically present in their office: simultaneous telephone and computer access, high-speed Internet and intranet access for e-mail, file sharing, and access to corporate servers.

Once people obtain broadband access to the home, they find that this access needs to be shared with other members of the family using multiple PCs. This includes workers who use laptop PCs at their workplace and desire to be able to use the same laptop at home. As a result, people are installing local-area networks (LANs) in their home. Once this LAN is in place, people want to use it to share files, printers, and devices such as scanners. Once broadband access and home networking reaches critical mass in terms of market penetration, there will be a new class of end-user devices that will enable many new Internet-enabled applications. Already, people are able to perform functions remotely via the Internet: monitoring and controlling their homes, viewing their children who are in day-care centers, checking on live traffic conditions, and playing stereo-quality music over Internet radios.

The key drivers for broadband growth, along with the resulting impacts, are summarized in Figure 1. The vision of the broadband home is that broadband multimedia-i.e., video, audio, voice, and data-will be delivered to and within the home to personal endpoint devices. Services will be affordable, easy to use, and available to the average family and will be delivered quickly, securely and reliably. Moving forward, all things will be connected.

Figure 1