A response to the UK Broadband Stakeholders Group 2004 call for a 'Broadband Vision for 2010'.

In 2004 we no longer marvel at the ready availability of hot water, a wide choice of wallpapers, the ability of computer systems to work together or cars that rarely break down and need only occasional maintenance.

By 2010 we will have the same nonchalant appreciation of broadband.  Like hot water, it is no longer a luxury.

In 2010 our ubiquitous connectors – multi-purpose, mostly personal, often mobile and compact communicating terminals – will come in a wide variety of guises.  Broadband-connected cameras will, for example, have transformed the DIY electronic news gathering scene and possibly have weakened the TV revenue base that underwrites football players’ transfer fees or the impending Olympic Games.

In 2010 the demand for high-performance networked services will have been met by a move forward to smarter software and a move back towards international standards where broadband starts at a minimum of 2Mb/s.

This network performance level will provide more than enough headroom for phone calls to include optional background music, graphic pop-ups of library images, on-screen prompts, in-call audio overlay playback of emails and voice messages.  Beyond the novelty of a creative communications experience, customers will have control over layers of security and privacy for different levels of content, transactional data and billing information.

And, in 2010 we will pay for these rich flexibilities in very different ways.  Flat-rate price fixations will be a distant memory and customers will control their choice of Quality of Service levels ‘on the fly’ to suit the needs of the moment – not unlike the ‘bandwidth on demand’ enjoyed today by SatDrive subscribers.

In 2010, however, we will not entirely be through the necessary pain of The Great IP Conversion – a process more traumatic and yet more transforming for those working in the ICT Sales Channels and their product suppliers.  Change will be resisted but the structure of Telco sales channels will be completely revised – much to the benefit of manufacturers and service suppliers, and to consumers currently confused by the phoney competitive claims of value-subtracting intermediaries.

And of the Great IP Conversion itself – far more disruptive than changing from DC to AC electricity or swapping Town Gas for North Sea Gas - this massive telephony conversion programme will have provided a huge incentive to close the window on the legacy of archaic PC design.  And the old Internet, so open to abuse, will have been overlaid with structures more intuitive and better geared to the diverse multimedia needs of interactive and information hungry customers.

In 2010 the old distinctions between Internet channels and broadcast TV programmes will be patiently explained if inquisitive children are puzzled by parental digital incompetence.  And by 2010 a few more systems designers will have learned that its not good enough to simply make things that work but to make things that work with other things.

By 2010 it will be clear that the catalyst for all this change will not have been any sudden enlightenment on the part of government.  Nor will the drivers have come have come from the regulator Ofcom – although the convergence of the old five regulatory tribes may have reduced the barriers to change.

Before 2010 the real drivers will be the competitive tensions arising from (a) radical new technologies and (b) a surge of discontent amongst increasingly tech-savvy customers.

The advent of low-cost portable (untethered) wireless broadband and a massive demand for IP communication will have provided a wake-up call for Telco’s.  The availability of ‘Personal Broadband’2 and real competitive choices for customers in any location and on the move, in contrast with shrinking legacy revenues from telephony, will have forced a reduction in the number of OSP’s - original service providers - mobile or fixed.

The resultant investment crisis may require massive support from the public sector in the form of long-term soft loans from the European Investment Bank – measures that will probably be seen as unfair by new market entrants with even-more disruptive technologies.

By 2010 we will have forgotten the angst of under-provision in rural areas.  Ofcom will understand that their remit reflects national economic imperatives and the interests of consumers.  The prioritisation of new service provision and conversion programmes in rural areas might even lead to a new digital divide and complaints from ‘disadvantaged’ suburban customers.

Further afield, in 2010, the whole Grand Design of European Harmonisation will at last be under a critical spotlight – and the downsides of complex and inflexible regulatory structures will be exposed as the wasteful spectrum set- aside policy collapses into the free market to be re-farmed and used more efficiently and effectively.  In 2010 the financial get-well plans of major spectrum licence holders will coincide with the technical get-real plans of a new breed of technologists untainted by the 1990’s hype of legacy manufacturers.

By 2010 the productivity impacts of broadband in business, the economic benefits for less-favoured areas, and the environmental and educational outcomes, will all be taken for granted and provide even more opportunities for success and failure of personal, corporate and governmental endeavours.

And finally the prospects beyond 2010, will be more than enough to encourage all of today’s experts, lobbyists, consultants, stakeholders, advisers and pundits to settle for a less-pressured but broadband-enabled retirement and write their books on how the Decade of Digital Divisions will become the curtain-raiser for a truly converged, innovative and global communications world led by the rapid growth of unfettered market economies in Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, the Indian sub-continent but most of all China.

This article also  appears in the UK's Broadband Stakeholders Group Report ''Visions for Broadband Britain in 2010''