During many assignments TenTen is often asked "what will the market look like in five years time?" If we knew that, TenTen would be a stoke broker, not a communications consultancy but the question is not unreasonable. The approach taken is to to look back by the same period of time and see whether you could see the seeds of change that have brought you to the market of today. Its generally not about technology (although marketing generally tells you that it is) but the players and sometimes legislation. You then use the same principal and experience to forward project in the same way. Any prediction should be assessed with hindsight. Here are the predictions made in 1999, when NASDAQ was still rising (it peaked in March 2000) and the predictions were written with respect to the broadband (DSL and Cable) market place. When I speak of 'importance' we are referring to mainstream, not early adopters.
1. Cable and DSL will make significant inroads for local access to the Internet, from 2000+. The initial success of Cable Modem will be soon followed by DSL. ADSL will dominate in the home, probably in the form of G.Lite variant initially and by G.dmt ADSL 2002+ .
This is largely correct, Cable runs through mainly residential urban areas and the best revenue opportunities of upgrading an exchange to DSL is with exchanges in the same areas. In the rural areas, cable is sparse so DSL will be the long term winner.
2. DSLAM requirement will specify G.Lite and G.dmt ADSL and RADSL support (CLEC and ILEC like to be cautious in their deployment) for residential, ADSL and include HDSL, SDSL, VDSL for commercial deployment.
This seems to have been correct. HDSL (and HDSL2 in Europe) are popular (low cost) wys of deploying T1 (E1) services. SDSL is coming on line.
3. New VDSL DSLAM for residential deployment will become available 2005+.
In 2003, VDSL trials are just beginning, so this prediction still seems valid.
4. Assumed (downstream) bandwidth for applications on the Internet will be 128k by 2002, 1M by 2005.
More applications (especially streaming ones) assume broadband connections, this appears to be correct. 100MByte download files (Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 is 124Mbyte) are more common. Most operators assumed asymmetry would be OK for residential users but the widespread use of P2P technologies like Kazaa are forcing operators to reconsider their traffic management plans.
5. Application-Application communication will be the dominant consumer of bandwidth by 2006.
P2P technology is already the dominant network protocol in the public internet today. Although probably carrying a large amount of copyrighted material, the popularity of the technology means it isn't going away..
6. 3G Mobile will be an important entrant for Internet access from 2000+, initially in the Far East (Samsung, DoCoMo, Sony), closely followed in Europe (Nokia, Ericsson). New applications like MP3 download, will be used to differentiate service offerings and products. US will follow, six months to a year later, or may grow concurrently with PDA applications like the Palm VII. PDA and Mobile technology will start to merge in 2000 and will be indistinguishable by 2002.
3G mobile is slower than predicted, financial meltdown, debt (caused in large part by the 3G auctions) and (probably) the immaturity of the technology made this unrealistic. Can't be right all of the time. Predictions of PDA and Mobile technology more of less correct.
7. Wired Internet consumer applications will become prevalent in 2001, starting with games consoles and/or digital satellite broadcast. Wireless home applications become widely available 2003+.
802.11 has made large inroads in corporate and home networks. Playstation and Xbox now have online add-ons which seem popular. Trend is correct, dates a little premature (didn't anticipate the telecomms meltdown).
8. The PC will not be the dominant Internet access vehicle in the home by 2003.
Mobile phones and Game consoles probably outsell PC's today and there are probably more devices of this type in each home than PC's. PC's seem at the bottom of their cost curves, consoles and phones offset cost of console for price of games and services so entry cost is lower.
9. Long distance carriers and PTTs will consolidate and/or diversify to become Application Service Providers (ASPs) by merger or acquisition (2004+). CLECs will make the change more readily but (regulation permitting) will be gaining revenue from the ‘niche’ voice market that requires no data services. Some CLEC’s will become bigger than ILECs of today.
Service provider market is in a mess because of large debts, falling capitalization, fraud and didn't move fast enough into the higher layer services as predicted. Providers have to pick themselves up and reinvent themselves, not an easy task.
10. Voice will be a legacy application for the net in terms of bandwidth by 2003 and will be included in a standard package with other applications like TV or Internet Access from ASP’s.
Voice is smaller than data in terms of bandwidth and the trend will continue. A lot of voice in service providers and enterprises are and will be carried by VOIP but until you get integrated voice data applications, you don't need anything but an ordinary phone, so most users wont be able to tell the difference. Flat rate tariffs for voice are not uncommon.
11. Survivors: Cisco, AT&T, Nokia, Nortel, Samsung, Sony, AOL. Likely survivors: Microsoft, Sun, Siemens, Motorola, Lucent, Nintendo. Likely casualties: Cabletron, 3Com, NewBridge, Marconi, Fujitsu, Sega
Microsoft have done better than anticipated, stand by most of other candidate ratings.