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 COLUMN
The Next Big Thing in the world of convergence: The Broadcast Internet WITH STOCKS IN DECLINE and summer here, you may be pondering The Next Big Thing. Well, I found it for you at Vortex 2000, my third conference on the convergence of Internet, telephone, and television networks. It's The Broadcast Internet.
Convergence appliances. Chris Shipley and Jim Forbes (www.demo.com) picked the hottest new convergence appliances, including Internet phones, palmtops, radios, cameras, game consoles, voice portals, set-top boxes, personalized televisions, and unified messaging services. Palm demonstrated Bluetooth short-range wireless. Microsoft demonstrated Xbox, to be smuggled into millions of homes as an awesome game console and then revealed as an awesome Internet appliance. Motorola demonstrated a Mercedes equipped with iRadio, a hands-free, two-way in-car information and entertainment system that converges Internet, radio, television, satellite, and global positioning networks. Optical Internet. Convergence on the all-optical Internet continues. DWDM (dense wave division multiplexing) fibers and optical switching are blowing past Moore's-Law-limited electronics toward 10Tbps. Will there be a bandwidth glut? According to Nortel, no. The number of users, their time on the Net, and bandwidth consumed by their applications are all going up. Internet bandwidth is getting cheap fast and price elasticity is driving demand up. Internet traffic, according to Worldcom, is growing 1,000 percent per year. Voice Internet. Internet telephony is accelerating thanks to VOIP (voice over IP). Voice portals that access Internet information over the telephone are all the rage. Wireless Internet. Wireless -- both mobile and fixed -- is The Current Big Thing. So our Federal Communications Commission is worried about a "spectrum drought" and is fighting monopolies to make modern use of various frequency bands. It's a good thing broadband fiberless is on the horizon above the FCC-regulated spectrum, with TeraBeam to offer 1Gbps over the last mile in the infrared at 190THz. Mobile insight. Mobile -- both wired and wireless -- is another version of The Current Big Thing. Mobile is not just a spectrum gobbler but a revolution in post-PC appliances and the content they deliver -- wherever you are. Video Internet. Internet convergence with television is not just using your TV as a cheap PC monitor, or using cable modems for Internet access, or turning expensive PC monitors into cheap TVs, or videoconferencing, or interactive television. Which brings us to The Next Big Thing. Broadcast Internet. Streaming media companies were a sign. Caching and content distribution companies were a sign. Napster and various Internet radios are a sign. And soon it will be obvious: The Internet is attracting broadcast content, especially radio and television content. Trouble is, the Internet can't broadcast streaming content. Multicasting and caching fail to deliver with reasonable quality or scale. But now, The Next Big Thing, which is the convergence of broadcast networks with the Internet, will better broadcast streaming content. New technologies, standards, and companies are aiming to carry the Internet over broadcast radio, television, cable television, and satellite. Soon, caching content servers will be fed not by the Internet's point-to-point backbones, but by broadcast backbones derived from today's broadcast networks. Think of "broadcast" and "narrowcast" at opposite ends of a spectrum -- as matters of degree. The Internet makes it possible to have millions of personalized and interactive broadcast channels. Much of their content is addressed to individual users. Much more is for many users and is best broadcast. So, The Next Big Thing is The Broadcast Internet. For a report card on convergence, see www.vortex.net. Bob Metcalfe 's new book is The Next Big Thing at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and at brick-and-mortar bookstores everywhere with cappuccino. Ask for Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry. Reviews to metcalfe@infoworld.com.  RELATED SUBJECTS  TelephonyWeb TechnologiesMORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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