More speed Scotty

As a child I can remember vividly being fascinated by the space antics in Star Trek especially when Captain Kirk asked Scotty for more warp speed, and Scotty always had problems giving the Cap'n the speed he needed. For a light hearted trip down memory lane, watch Eddie Izzard.

I thought of Star Trek/warp speed in reading Vic Keegan's ruminations on the success of the BBC's iPlayer and the moaning of the ISP's that its success is creating a huge sucking sound, as it rabidly consumes bandwidth. Something that Vic had touched on before

The BBC's iPlayer has been a huge success and could soon account for 10% of UK traffic. That is the problem: it devours bandwidth, and internet service providers (ISPs) are up in arms. They argue that because of the success of a tax-funded service they are being forced to boost capacity while getting nothing in return beyond their monthly subscriptions. They want the BBC to pay for extra capacity.

Isn't that rich? Because British ISPs - unlike their counterparts in other countries - can't provide fast enough broadband, they are blaming the BBC (not other big downloaders such as YouTube) for being too successful in generating demand.

More speed Scotty

Vic points to the economic success, of countries that have invested in high speed connectivity as a matter of national importance, namely South Korea, Japan and France. Like other core infrastructure, the speed of the transference of bytes vs. atoms is going to be of huge economic importance.

Perhaps the UK's broadband will become as efficient as our M25 - with restrictive speed limits?

The iPlayer saga could be just what the country needs to wake up to the fact that our broadband speeds, as opposed to broadband availability, are way behind other leading countries - including not just South Korea and Japan, but France as well. One of the key factors governing economic growth in future could be the speed of a country's broadband as digital breakthroughs in other services - including health, education, high-definition television and virtual worlds - demand more capacity. Those of us who have argued for decades that supply would create its own demand for broadband are being proved right with a vengeance. A few years ago, leading companies, such as BT, and politicians, not least Gordon Brown, wondered where services would spring up to justify the investment in faster broadband...

Vic wonders whether our PM might grasp this as his big idea - I am not so sure. David Cameron called Gordon Brown an analogue politician in a digital age, and yesterday's Guardian Leader explored the Governments failure to use of Open Source software

A small collection of CDB thoughts on broadband, speed and connectivity.

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