Keyfindings at a glance

• The significance of information technology and telecommunications (ICT) to the German economy will continue to grow. Experts from public institutions expect it to account for around 12% of GDP by the year 2015 — around double the current share.
   
• Integrated business models comprising broadband access, communications and content (Triple Play) will dominate the German broadband market in the year 2015, according to the experts. Some 75 % of broadband experts anticipate integrated Triple Play products will become the standard products of access providers in the years ahead.
   

• Apart from communications options (e.g. Voice Over IP — VoIP — or voice telephony via the Internet), broadband experts are of the view that content will become the most significant broadband segment in the next few years.

• Broadband experts predict the central drivers of future expansion in broadband Internet in the coming years will be Internet and voice telephony — including in the form of Triple Play offerings.
   
• The main factors for successful VoIP products in the future, according to the experts, will be low usage fees and widespread Internet access. Package deals combining access and VoIP services are considered very important, along with ease of use (over 90 % agreement on both counts). Market development is currently being hampered by the persistent lack of a critical user mass. The lack of market transparency from a customer point of view is also putting a damper on growth.
   
• As far as broadband content usage is concerned, broadband experts are predicting the greatest growth rates for Video on Demand; household use of Video on Demand is set to increase to around 23% by 2015. At the same time, the use of Music on Demand products in relation to the number of households is predicted to account for 30% and online gaming products for over 16 % by 2015.
   
• The experts consulted believe the range of offerings and flexibility of terms will be particularly important to the market success of any broadband content products. For consumers, the key factors are low pricing and convenient access to content (fast download times).
   
• Content categories of particular interest to consumers include education and science, local information and all kinds of offerings involving PC, Internet and mobile phone technology. When it comes to mobile usage, local business services, news and local entertainment are in particularly high demand.
   
• Around 42 % of digital home experts estimate that market growth in digital home solutions will be high-to-very high in the lead-up to 2015.
   
• More than 60 % of digital home experts rate the growth prospects of integrated home entertainment networks as high-to-very high and predict that the home entertainment market will make up around 50% of the total digital home market by the year 2015.
   
• The integration of Triple Play and digital home products will, in the view of more than 70% of respondents in the digital home category, give rise to new business models in the broadband market over the next ten years. The majority of digital home experts anticipate that the two markets will converge by 2015.
   
• Two thirds of public sector experts consulted in the study are of the view that a superior broadband infrastructure will be crucial to the success of Germany’s international competitiveness in the year 2015. An even higher proportion of European experts concur with this view.
   
• Although the great importance and benefits of broadband technologies are recognized, there are deficits in some areas. The German development status in the e-government domain — i.e. the deployment of broadband Internet in public administration and to provide public services — can only be described as mediocre by international standards. In the e-learning sphere, European experts rate Germany’s current level of development as below average. To be more specific, they predict that it will take until about 2010 for Germany to approximate the e-learning capability of Sweden back in 2003.
   
• Two thirds of the European experts consulted predict that by 2015 broadband Internet will be taken as a given throughout Europe.