Future applications that justify a NBN

I noticed a post just recently by journalist Stilgherrian, asking what future applications and services should be used to sell the NBN (National Broadband Network) benefits. He notes in his post that “the government’s expensive-looking TV adverts are nothing but vague generalities” and asks if anyone can come up with a more interesting list of applications that justifies the call for “more bandwidth”. I felt inclined to respond and did so with the following:

Many of the comments and applications listed so far are pretty good, however I’ve got a few observations to add. As already noted above, the NBN delivers two fundamentals: The first is ubiquitous access, which is also intended to be affordable (unlike mobile data services). The second of course is bandwidth, lots of bandwidth (here though, you get what you pay for).

Also, it’s important to distinguish between mass market services (like communication and entertainment) and the bespoke opportunities (like data transfers between hospitals/broadcasters etc), I’ll focus on the mass market opportunities as the NBN is fundamentally for households.

The affordable ubiquity aspect of the NBN will support:

• The Internet of Things: The connectivity of a myriad of devices that will want to send and receive (albeit it small) continuous streams of data to simplify (arguable) our lifestyles. These are the smart appliances, the smart houses, the smart organisers, the smart messaging systems, security systems etc. They want cheap, always-on data.
• Telephony: Yep, that plain old telephony service, also called the USO in Australia, will be delivered using the NBN. I’ll argue that a basic Internet service should also be considered as part of the USO. I’ll also argue that voice telephony in the future really should be a free hitchhiker on the data network (it’s that small in comparison).
• Backups/Restore: I completely agree with this opportunity, and in fact I don’t think enough people have lost a big enough data store yet to realise just how much they need this. The reality though, is that the amount of data we generate per day that we need to preserve, is relatively small (ie. measured in megabytes, not gigabytes per day currently), yet it will grow.
• Internet/Information: Having access to the typical Interwebs as we know today, with decent speeds and decent traffic allowances (bandwidth caps) should be available to all Australian demographics, regardless of income levels. Some aspects of remote learning can be addressed here but not the video ones.
• Remote Working (teleworking): As we focus less on industrial processes and more on informational processes, then the opportunities for remote working become increasingly viable. Again, this is with the proviso that only some aspects of remote working can be supported. Future remote working is likely to require significant bandwidth and connectivity.

The greatly increased bandwidth aspect of the NBN will support:

• Television: Passive video entertainment bandwidth demand is just going to grow. From the SDTV video broadcasts of today, right through to the 3D UHDTV video on demand and interactive TV of tomorrow. In the US trials and experiments with multi-view (think reality TV or sports with simultaneous broadcasting of all screens instead of cutting between them; although the experiments were soap dramas) and interactive television (will this be significantly different from modern computer gaming) in the future.
• Teleconferencing and Telepresence: This application is a real game-changer as it transitions from the early adopters to mainstream. The applications for teleconferencing and telepresence range from work related, through entertainment, to socialisation and all the way through to health and well-being. The cost and efficiency savings in this area alone will be significant if a NBN Cost/Benefits Analysis is ever done.
• Virtual presence: I separate virtual presence from telepresence although they are related. This is a huge driver for bandwidth and the commercial opportunities are stratospheric. As the costs and inconvenience of travel increase (we may have forgotten about it, but global warming and sustainability hasn’t forgotten about us) then opportunities to offer the following also increase:
  • Virtual Tourism: The ability to visit another part of the world from the comfort of your own home, cost effectively. You could take tours (either group or individual) through historic areas or visit natural wonders. This can be either simulated or even done for real. Imagine joining a live and guided tours of the Great Pyramids in Egypt, The Louvre in France, a River trip down the Amazon or just a walk through a Himalayan village.
  • Virtual Socialising: The ability to organise a virtual get together for either social, entertainment or business use. Rural and regional communities could use this application to organise local event meetings, families which are more geographically dispersed nowadays could use these applications to attend major family events such as weddings remotely.
  • Virtual Concerts: Imagine being able to get front row seats to see the biggest name in entertainment perform live in the comfort of your home, instead of putting up with a ticket that places you at almost telescope distance away from the stage and something god-awful has been done with the sound balance.
  • Virtual Experiences: And finally the application that is already happening and continuing to improve every year. All of the online virtual worlds, aspects of distance video education, virtual conferences and multi-user online games fall into this category. As available bandwidth and network performance increases, these will only become more realistic, more useful and more fanciful.

And that’s my 2c worth, hope it helps.

And of course I forgot some, which often happens when you type something up quickly in between other tasks.

• A key one I forgot was remote security monitoring, in particular remote video monitoring.
• Another one is Cloud Computing, in particular SaaS/IaaS/PaaS (Software/Infrastructure/Platform as a Service). Cloud computing is a rather nebulous term and could almost incorporate anything that is network provided. For this purpose I’m going to focus on cloud computing as being “virtual processing capabilities” and not as concrete services like search which may use cloud computing systems. With this definition in mind, cloud-computing is more driven by business needs, rather than end-user needs and hence would typically not drive a full-on residential access network upgrade. The services operated on virtualised platforms may, but the virtualised platforms themselves do not.

Let me know if I’ve missed any others please.