Mass-market high-bandwidth applications such as Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) Home will spark a war of wills between application providers and network operators that is ultimately likely to hit consumers in the pocket. For several years, broadband operators in Europe have focused on expanding the bandwidth available to consumers. However, applications designed to make use of this new capacity have put increased pressure on the quality and stability of network connections, and not just bandwidth availability. PS3's Home service is a 3D virtual world where users can have their own "living room", which they can decorate with videos, music and pictures from their computer. It follows a string of similar applications, such as SecondLife, Habbo Hotel and Cyworld that have in common a need for high bandwidth. Questions are now being raised about where operators will generate the revenues to afford enhanced management of their networks. In the UK, where competition in the broadband market has led to a sharp fall in tariffs coupled with "unlimited"-usage deals, several operators are now raising prices for their higher-quality offers. UK ISP Madasafish, which has 60,000 broadband customers, has grown 30% since mid-February, despite having prices significantly higher than its larger competitors. It differentiates itself by ensuring that it has sufficient network capacity to offer every customer the highest-possible speed. Also, it doesn't shape traffic by, for example, blocking peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic.
展开▼
