This makes the existing internet great for web-browsing, email, etc., but pretty bad for trying to perform live videocasting to an audience of any significance.

Not only does the Net tend to perform rather poorly when faced with such challenges but it's also an obscene waste of bandwidth and resources.

The best technology for streaming audio or video is the one we've been using for nearly a century -- wireless. Actually it's rather funny -- when I was a kid, my grandmother used the term "wireless" to refer to radio broadcasts. Now, some 40 years later, the term has come back into fashion when referring to a radio-based communications system. What next? Will platform shoes also make a come-back (shudder!)

Of course the old wireless was an analog transmission with no handshaking -- but IP networks already support UDP protocols which are a close digital equivalent. It would not be too hard therefore, for wireless Net services to make several video/audio streams available to their users without chewing excessive amounts of their bandwidth.

With this in mind, perhaps companies such as Whoosh ought to be working hard with small regional TV operators to help deliver their content to an audience composed of wireless Net users. Regional broadcasters have notoriously poor coverage and would likely benefit from extended reach -- especially if it were available at low/no cost to them.

Video will become an increasingly important part of the "online experience" and it might well be that the ability to deliver data on a one-to-many basis while using no more bandwidth than a single one-to-one connection could become a strong selling point for wireless operators.

Given that we have no real penetration of cable TV in NZ and that Sky's satellite service is expensive and lacking in quality, perhaps wireless internet multi-casting will be the real alternative.

That's assuming that the proposed new TVNZ free-to-air satellite service doesn't fly.

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