Rich Fiscus
4 Dec 2007 18:57
The results of a survey by Broadbandchoices.co.uk are in not surprisingly a majority of respondents, some 61%, rated "downloading DVD quality films in five minutes" as the feature they're most interested in having available through their broadband internet connection.
Despite an interest in lightning fast movie downloads, consumers surveyed aren't necessarily prepared to pay a premium for the capability. Nearly the same number indicated that either they wouldn't pay more for it or they weren't sure if they would. Interestingly, watching videos was actually rated as the least popular current online activiy.
"From our results it does appear a little contradictory that respondents rated 'watching TV' or downloading films as being the least amount of time spent on the internet in a week and yet when asked which future service would be of most interest rated them as the most popular," said Michael Phillips, product director at BroadbandChoices.co.uk.
"It could be that current services are not at a high enough standard to warrant utilising video services. If speeds were improved, consumers are more likely to use broadband to watch TV and/or download films," said Phillips.
Although it doesn't apparently offer any real answer to the problems posed by delivering high quality video across residential internet connections, it does raise a point that what we need to make such a thing a reality goes beyond simply adding another 2-3Mb of download capacity to your local cable system. Instead, planners should be looking at countries like South Korea, which has internet connections upwards of 50Mbps available to most homes.
There was some criticism of the difference between marketed and real speeds by broadband providers. Phillips said "We need transparency from providers on the kind of speeds customers can actually expect to get, rather than flashy advertising and ever increasing top speeds and this needs to be carried forward with the future of broadband."
Source: BBC