BronWith the development of the Web2.0, in other words online service such as YouTube or Dailymotion, as well as VOD or online Video Rental services, the internet bandwidth literally exploded. If one adds the effect of P2P (reported to drain about a third of the worldwide bandwidth), internet users keep increasing their bandwidth consumption.
However, if this could look like an unlimited resource, it starts to have a cost for ISP, especially when they have to use hardware infrastructure developed by competitors.
If in France and in general in Europe, the competition between ISP allows users to have access to full broadband internet at a very low price (triple play ADSL or ADSL2+ for less than 30 Euros/month), with transfer speed only defined by the distance between your computer and the central server, in other countries such services are simply not available yet. In USA, partially due to the size of the country and also to the investment required, broadband internet remains restricted to some dense area. AT&T is current still offering "broadband" subscription plan ranging from 768 Kbits/s, 1.5 or 3 Mbits/s... and associated to defined and rather expensive subscription plans. Recently, AT&T decided to significantly increase - around 5 USD/month - the price of most of its offers, in order to better stick to the real cost of broadband internet... This decision will affect millions of internet users in USA, but might also be required to improve aging American infrastructure, as the competition between different ISP does not really push them to make the investment required to bring true broadband ADSL/ADSL2+ to their customers.
In Europe, over the last few months, there is a "concentration effect" taking place among ISPs, with several of them throwing the towel and being acquired by larger ones at the EU level. Even though we have regulation and control authorities, the surviving ISP might be tempted to increase the price of their triple/quadruple-play offers in a near future as they have started investing in the next generation infrastructure by expanding their optical fiber network to bring them directly to customer's home (100Mbits/s and more).
Blijkt dat het niet altijd even rooskleurig is zoals in de VS.
ADSL snelheden van 1,5 Mbit zijn daar blijkbaar nogal behoorlijk normaal. Door toenemende bandbreedte intensieve applicaties kost traffiek hun ook alsmaar meer en meer, en willen ze daarom de daadwerkelijke traffiek kosten gaan doorrekenen naar eindgebruikers.
Dit zou tevens moeten bevorderlijk zijn om meer investeringen te doen naar nieuwe technologieën (ADSL2+ en co).
Evolueren straks alle landen terug naar de datalimieten politiek in België? Prijzen omhoog, anyone?
Het ziet er allemaal mooi uit met glasvezels die dichterbij komen (letterlijk) om de oude koperparen te vervangen, maar... ?[/code]
