IT applications driving broadband infrastructure.
Over the past five to ten years we have seen great improvements in IT infrastructure developments, both in business and in government organisations.
Driven by the need to save costs, IT systems have been implemented that have automated many front- and back-office activities. Apart from the actual IT changes involved this has also changed the workforce behind these applications. Many people needed to be reskilled so as to be able to operate basically the same functions but with different tools. Often this consisted of changing from a largely manual process to a fully automated one.
The multi-billion dollar investments that are taking place have also resulted in super fast, efficient and cheap hardware.
An overview of some these new processes include:
- ordering, purchasing and transactions;
- dealer and sales support, customer service systems;
- automation in healthcare and education;
- e-government between agencies, services and applications to the public;
- web-based services (front-office and back-office);
- online publishing, media and advertising services.
While some services directly involve the public, most of them are still more on an internal level – between departments, between health care facilities, between government, their agencies and schools, hospitals, police offices, and so on.
The next revolution will take place between these organisations and their end-users. And broadband is the key infrastructure for the delivery of these services.
After five to ten years of practice with the above mentioned systems and applications, most organisations are now ready to take this next step. Further cost savings and the availability of low cost IT solutions are going to drive this.
As is becoming clear in countries where high-speed broadband infrastructure is widely available, businesses and government agencies are now pushing these IT applications out to the public. The first indications are that this can lead to direct cost savings of between 5% and 15%.
This is going to have an enormous impact on the budgets of health and education departments, and on the budgets of businesses with large customer service overheads. Many organisations desperately need these new IT/broadband facilities to be able to keep up with the demand for their services; this is most urgently the case in healthcare.
Already we see ‘impatient’ providers pushing for a faster rollout of broadband infrastructure; some are becoming actively involved in what are, for them, key markets; and others are looking at subsidising infrastructure costs in order to be able to push out their e-services.
The infrastructure costs involved in these services is often below 5% of the total costs; and it’s never more than 10%, so they can see the advantages of becoming involved in these broadband infrastructure developments.
Some telcos have problems understanding the massive shift that is taking place before their eyes, and they are unwilling, or incapable, of making the changes necessary to facilitate this process. However, this is the tsunami I have been talking about, and it is simply unstoppable.
Some telcos are now starting to face the consequences of having underinvested in their local access infrastructure for the last decade or more. No wonder others have become impatient and begun to look at alternative infrastructure (often, of course, in the most lucrative parts of the network first).
These include large cities such as Amsterdam, Brisbane, New York, San Diego and Stockholm (the last one already since 1990). Online media companies wishing to get their services out are building wireless broadband networks, and companies such as News Limited are providing free broadband access, provided the customer subscribes to their services also. Regional towns – really feeling neglected in all this – often have no choice other than to directly manage the process themselves.
Over the next five years we will see an explosion in high-speed broadband infrastructure, from both the incumbent providers and elsewhere. This will often be a chaotic process, as it means an enormous change to the monopolistic structures that are currently in place -which are often not able to cope with the massive increase in demand for bandwidth.
Most countries are ill-prepared, lack the appropriate government policies to address these national infrastructure developments, and are still not completely capable of grappling with these changes.
Paul Budde
For more info see:-
Global Broadband Infrastructure
