Sponsor's Message

Fortunately the move is over a much smaller distance this time, just a couple of Kms, but it does mean a lot of packing and unpacking needs to be done -- and I have to ensure that my internet connectivity is switched over as smoothly as possible.

It's actually times like this that the true value of wireless connectivity becomes apparent.

Fortunately for me, I still have the Vodafone GPRS card that I used when travelling overseas about this time last year so, with a bit of luck, the publishing of Aardvark won't be affected by the activities of the next week or so.

I think it's safe to say that services like GPRS will always have a niche where very wide area wireless connectivity to portable devices is important.

But what about wireless providers like Woosh and others who are providing broadband connectivity at far lower prices, albeit with much less coverage, than GPRS?

Is there really a viable market for these services?

Do they have sufficient capacity and spectrum to grow at the rate and to the levels required to become economically sustainable in the face of DSL?

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination.

And what ever happened to two-way satellite connectivity -- something that a new would-be provider announces about once a year but never really seems to be able to deliver at anything like an affordable price?

Exactly what is the future of broadband delivery?

I see that good old DSL is being enhanced and now the UDSL flavour has been announced by Texas Instruments.

UDSL lifts the speed of broadband over copper to an astonishing 200mbps and opens the door to a raft of new services such as HD television -- albeit only over distances of up to 1 kilometre.

However, this distance limitation isn't the problem you might think and the strategic positioning of DSLAMs in pillar-boxes around a heavily urbanised city might still have the potential to turn phone lines into a cost-effective way of delivering an alternative to cable-based subscriber TV services for example.

Of course I don't think we'll see this happening here in NZ for a number of reasons.

Firstly, with only a few exceptions, our population densities are too low to actually reach a sufficiently large customer-base without massive infrastructure expenditure. The suburban sprawl that is typical of so many NZ cities simply isn't well suited to such a short-distance delivery system.

And then there's the simple fact that when you're dealing with a one-to-many fan-out of the type that broadcasting represents, using RF via broadcast or satellite makes much more sense in terms of efficient resource use.

And I'd wager that the issue of resource efficiency will become increasingly important to the future of broadband, particularly wireless broadband.

One of the nice things about cables in the ground is that you can just keep laying them because the signals in one has no effect on the signals in another.

By comparison, wireless is effectively working with a single cable containing a large number (but effectively finite) of individual wires. Right now there are plenty of spare wires in that cable but as the number of users and the bandwidth they need increases, there's always the risk that a ceiling will be hit.

The only way to cope with that is to add new wires (frequencies) -- and there are only a limited number of these available too.

Where do you see the future of broadband delivery headed?

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!