Drivers of the broadband market

Which applications will be the key drivers of broadband Internet penetration in the future? The number one drivers are cited as Internet and video telephony. In Germany these communications options have achieved limited penetration to date. But in future, almost 78% of respondents expect VoIP and video telephony to be of high (around 33%) to very high importance (around 45%) in the spread of broadband Internet technology (Table 1). The consumer survey confirms this assumption. Almost 60% of respondents expressed a high to very high level of interest in Internet telephony and video telephony.

Table 1:		Applications driving the future penetration of broadband Internet access (broadband experts, digital home experts and experts from government agencies)

A further application with great future potential, according to around 66% of the experts, is Video on Demand. A similarly high number of respondents also see Triple Play, or the integration of broadband connection (access), Voice over IP (communications) and TV (content), as an important to very important driver of the demand for broadband Internet. Online music sales and TV via DSL are identified as important factors for the future spread of broadband Internet connections by 58% and 57% of the experts, respectively.

Significantly, a further 40% to 50% of the experts consulted rated online games, integration of Triple Play and mobile broadband access, Internet video recorders, digital video recorders and online shopping as important to very important drivers. Comparatively minor importance was ascribed to Internet radio and interactive TV in determining the future diffusion of broadband Internet access.