THE OTHER DAY I was locked in a "telepresence" suite at Cisco's Auckland headquarters for two hours.
For those unfamiliar with Telepresence, it's the company's high-end video conferencing product. It enables a meeting to take place with people located around the world. I was joined by journalists and Cisco reps from Melbourne, Sydney and San Jose.
The reason for the meeting was to receive a press briefing about Cisco's latest Visual Networking Index (VNI), a rolling five-year forecast that predicts the size and nature of internet traffic around the world.
Most vendor surveys are thinly disguised attempts at getting free copy in the editorial pages of technology publications, but the VNI has gained credibility - it was accurate within 10% of its projected growth prediction last year.
According to the latest forecast New Zealand's IP traffic is expected to double in the next five years to 318 petabytes of data by 2017. Global IP traffic will increase threefold in the same period, to 121 exabytes of data. An exabyte is 1000 petabytes, and a petabyte is 1000 terabytes.
Cisco vice president for global technology policy Robert Pepper (speaking from San Jose) said the four catalysts driving the increase in traffic globally are more internet users, more devices, faster broadband speeds and more rich media content. By 2017, Cisco predicts around 28% of the world's population will have access to the internet, while in New Zealand 92% of the population will be connected.
Cisco predicts average broadband speeds to grow 8.3-fold to 70Mbps in 2017 and the average mobile connection speed will grow four-fold to 6,068 Kbps by 2017.
It's also forecast that by 2017 there will be 24 million devices/connections in New Zealand and that equates to around five devices/connections for every person.
I thought that must include machine- to-machine connections like wearable tech, such as wristbands that measure your heart rate when you go running, but no, it's devices such as PCs and laptops, tablets, smartphones, set top boxes and gaming devices.
By 2017 there will be 24 million devices or connections in New Zealand
So much for convergence - the idea that one device can fulfill every digital desire. Who would have thought you would need a smartphone, tablet and a PC?
The other big driver for the increase in data is video. If Cisco is correct and New Zealanders will enjoy average broadband speeds of 70Mbps in 2017 (a very optimistic prediction), then what will we be downloading?
I'd like to think it will be a smorgasboard of top-notch content from local and international providers such as BBC's iPlayer and the US on-demand service Netflix. In order for those companies to unlock their content for New Zealanders to enjoy - and pay for - it's not just the broadband infrastructure that needs to improve, it's also the regulatory environment to further enable competition in the content market.
The Commerce Commission is currently looking into issues around the pay TV market. To quote the Commissioner Mark Berry: "We are aware of concerns that access to content and Sky's contracts with internet service providers may be hindering competition. As a result, we have now opened a separate investigation under sections 27 and 36 of the Commerce Act."
That announcement was made on May 16 - last year. At the time of writing Broadband Diary, there had been no outcome. I regularly send an email to the Commission asking for news, and the latest reply is typical: "Thanks for checking - sorry, the investigation is still ongoing, with no firm deadline (which is often the way on a large investigation as there are so many factors that can impact on when it finishes)."
I do hope, for the sake of Cisco's predictions at least, that they get a move on.
0 comments:
Post a Comment