The Immanent Bandwidth Cap Wars
As internet service providers offer their customers faster speeds, a new area of competition has begun. At first, there was a race to provide the fastest download and upload speeds. Of late the speed race has outstriped the capabilities of consumers’ PCs. This created a new cost consideration for the internet service providers. The bandwidth cap is quickly becoming the new battlegrounds where these companies must compete.
There are cost limitations on the amount of bandwidth a consumer may use in a month. While consumers may sometimes feel that there is a global conspiracy preventing them from getting their desired monthly bandwidth caps at a affordable cost, there are realistic hardware costs involved in getting data to your computer at speeds that most consumers now feel entitled to. However, prices are generally determined by how much a consumer is willing to shell out for a product. As it stands, the costs being charged by most internet service providers seem to be acceptable. However, one change in user behavior looms on the horizon. This inevitability threatens the present comfortable footing on which service providers rest their business plans. The normal consumer will eventually want to watch on-demand HD television content on their computers. This will spell the end of television as we know it.
While cable companies certianly have an interest in forestalling the inevitable by limiting monthly bandwidth, they will be unable to maintain control of the market indefinitely. Wireless internet is being made available nearly everywhere at blinding speeds. This will make it impossible for this media transition to be prevented by any commercial means.
This is wonderful news for the consumer. As companies start to advertise that you get more bandwidth for your money, these caps will go up rapidly due to market pressure. Companies that offer hardware to internet service providers will have to lower their prices in turn. This is just the way of the world.
With all the different ways to transfer data, there must be a huge focus on quality. For the user that desires to view high quality videos, this will represent a dramatic improvement on the current online experience. High quality content comes with higher bandwidth demands.
Higher bandwidth limits will also affecthave an impact on the quality of content that is made. Most current media files need to be compressed to meet bandwidth limitations. If it’s possible to send more data at faster speeds, these limitations would become immaterial. This may result in new advancements in music storage software. Why not increase the size of music files if they can be transferred very quickly? The same logic would apply for video files and any other content that people may attempt to share online. If distributers can move bigger files, then movie files should be available with better quality. Over time this will permit for massive growth in the quality of audio and video files.
Online games will participate in this expansion too. As data transfer rates explode, you can expect games to take full advantage of all the newly available bandwidth. Online games will never tie up the same amount of bandwidth as streaming video or music, but the extra capacity can surely be put to use in some way.
There is a bright future for online content. While many may complain about the current bandwidth caps, we are not far away from an all out race between providers to deliver the increased bandwidth at lower costs. In the long run, this will be a win for the fans of high quality online content.
Geek Choice understands that consumers enjoy high quality media. As a nationwide computer repair company, we work hard to help people enjoy the experience with their machines. If you are having problems with your media center PC, call a customer service representative at 1-800-GEEK HELP (433-5435).
Related Posts:
- Related posts on bandwidth
- Hunting the Mythical "Bandwidth Hog" | Technology News – backLINK