Drivers of global broadband Internet

What broadband trends will dictate the directions of future development? What segments have the capacity to drive further growth? “Deutschland Online” provides fascinating answers to these questions.

According to the international experts surveyed, the key pace-setters will be Internet telephony (voice over IP) and mobile broadband Internet, followed by content services such as video on demand, e-commerce and combination packages like triple play (Fig. 62).

Fig. 62:		Drivers for growth in the broadband Internet market (International experts)

The same trends are reflected in the experts’ ratings of the significance of the most popular and widely-used Internet applications in the triad regions. Here again, the first segments cited are mobility and communication. Mobile applications and personalized local services (location-based services) are widespread in the triad regions, and are rated as particularly important by the international experts surveyed (see Fig. 63). In contrast, mobile Web 2.0 applications are not yet widely used in the triads, although this relatively recent trend can certainly be expected to gain momentum in coming years.

Fig. 63:		Broadband Internet applications in the triad regions (International experts)

But what does all this mean for us here in Europe? First of all: we are well placed in the global information society. We are fast catching up with the country that pioneered the Internet, the United States. And at the global level we are playing an increasingly important role within the group of ICT “great powers.”

But in spite of an overall favorable trend for Europe as a whole, a determined effort is needed to address our domestic priorities for building an information society. In Germany’s case, this primarily means nurturing and supporting a culture where a spirit of openness towards new technological advances becomes a matter of course. One of the key factors in this context will be an educational system which is tailored to the needs of the global information society, because to survive and prosper in a networked world, we need to have a sound understanding of that world.