Daniel Ballon, a policy fellow in technology studies at San Francisco-based think tank Pacific Research Institute (PRI), gave a presentation on "The Future of Broadband" that looked at the market for broadband and some of the models of projected growth.
He listed eight innovations that are likely to drive future broadband growth:
- High-definition video-on-demand services like Hulu and Netflix (Parks Associates forecasts that the customer base will expand seven-fold in five years, to about 30% of households)
- Internet TV services like Joost, Fancast and Veoh (iSuppli predicts the market will reach $5.8 billion by 2011)
- High-definition video conferencing like telepresence
- Telemedicine
- Virtual worlds
- Internet-connected gaming consoles like Xbox Live (Parks Associates forecasts it to be a $8 billion+ market by 2013)
- Cloud computing (According to IDC, spending on cloud services will reach $42 billion by 2012)
From the article, "PRI Fellow: The Future of Broadband Looks Bright"
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