Feb 1, 2001 12:00 PM, OLIVER MASCIAROTTE

Faster, cheaper, everything you always wantedin a common carrier. Broadband is the soon-to-be-retired buzzword of the year gone by. Not as fashionable as WAP, but infinitely more important. Not as cheap as POTS, but essential, nonetheless, to modern business. But it's not the savior of man-, woman- or engineering-kind either.

The first thing to remember: Broadband is just another distribution method. Second thing to remember: E-business is just business. Whether it's DAM (digital asset management), VPNs or entertainment, the Internet is changing the first world, and broadband is changing the Net, but not in as fundamental a way as some might think. The telegraph started us on this instant communication road, and broadband is just a natural extension.

In 1992, some renegades from Skywalker Ranch started EDnet, the grandpa of virtual tie line services. They first used ISDN, the only reasonably priced digital service available from the telcos at that time, to send approval mixes from Northern California to Southern California for the Ron Howard film Backdraft. ISDN was too costly for widespread adoption and never made significant inroads here in the States. A basic business SDSL account provides 12 times the bandwidth of a similarly priced ISDN account. A single channel of raw 48/24 requires 1.152 Mbps, and two channels of 44.1/16 sucks up 1.4112 Mbps. With a symmetrical, 1.5 Mbps, always-on SDSL connection, phoning in your part doesn't seem so lame. The investors of Rocket Network are trembling with anticipation.

So let's talk about the current technologies. Right now, symmetrical broadband access to the Net is really valuable only to select businesses, such as multinationals with far-flung satellite offices. Media moguls, like ourselves, are a small but often motivated group that could also benefit from broadband services. Trouble is, most of us don't get paid enough to afford industrial-strength versions.

THE CONTENDERS: CABLE

In some outlets, cable is the only way you can get broadband service. Several cable providers are starting to price their services aggressively, targeting corporate users in addition to the home accounts that we've all heard about. Like the dangling participle in my previous sentence, broadband via cable has one glaring problemthe dreaded shared bandwidth. With half a dozen subscribers in a neighborhood, life is good, as the fixed bandwidth available is divvied up only a few ways. As more and more subscribers tap in, however, individual service degenerates as the aggregate bandwidth is sliced wafer thin. Just think what video over IP would do!

WIRELESS

My cell phone is a WAPenabled device that works great as a digital phone, which isn't saying much. It's supposed to be free and clear, but, boy, can you hear the compression artifacts. Anyway, it has a Web mini-browser, which I never use due to two factors: exorbitant cost and absurd display. Imagine getting deeply involved with the wireless Internet when you're staring at a screen the size of a Brazil nut. That about sums up the current state of wireless broadbandcostly and quirky.

Currently, there is practical broadband wireless, and it comes in two distinct flavors. So-called fixed wireless applications, where the transceivers are nailed down, are projected to be a high-growth area of broadband services. One approach has targeted MANs, or metro area networks, where fat connections between buildings in a campus setting are desired, but digging up the lawn to plant some fiber isn't. The other approach is more akin to some current digital TV services; they use a satellite. These services, aimed at the more than 20 million folks outside the reach of fiber, cable or copper, will be challenged by rural electric utilities that will offer AC power and broadband into your house over the same wire.

G3, or third-generation wireless protocols, promise seemingly infinite bandwidth anywhere. In reality, migration costs will limit adoption to those who really need such services. Once better standards emerge and consumer products mature, wireless delivery will become another specialized player in the overall information dissemination fabric.

DSL

DSL is the winner in the interim time frame, with reasonable cost for both provider and consumer as long as you're physically close to your local telco switch. A significant feature of all business DSL accounts is a static IP address. This means that your company has a permanent address on the Web, which in turn means you can host an ftp or Web site in-house.

The content: Data, it's all data. Just as networked storage will some day all be transported over IP, I'll hazard a guess that even a nice reuben sandwich will someday be delivered via IP packets. Just kidding, though it seems that way at times. Eventually, IP traffic will carry everything, both block- and file-based data, around the world.

The emerging 10Gigabit Ethernet standard is shaping up as the bridge between LANs and MAN/WANs. 10GigE explicitly incorporates QoS (Quality of Service), a feature not inherent in the PSTN network and vital to the continued growth of broadband. Interestingly, general adoption of 10GigE should foreshadow the eventual retirement of reliable but expensive ATM, which has been the only way to provide WANs and MANs with guaranteed QoS.

The catalyst for widespread adoption may not be, gasp, surround audio but good ol' low-bandwidth voice communication. Because disagreements between record companies and CE manufacturers continue to impede the development of a digital content protection standard, music downloads won't fill up anyone's bank account any time soon. Instead, everybody's frantically vying for a piece of the VoIP action, hoping to cash in on the public's perception of the Net as a place to go for anything cheap. And money is really the gating factor for broadband. Though fiber to the home will eventually win the war, the required changes to the infrastructure, whether it's a passel of new photonic DWDM switches at the local exchange or licenses for wireless spectrum from the government, are horribly expensive. Who's going to bear those costs? If you said the end-user, then me thinks you'd be right.

OMas is a provider of professional services to the content creation community. More nerdy reading on this and other topics is always waiting for you at http://seneschal.net.

Mix Books

Modern Recording and Mixing

This 2-DVD set will show you how the best in the music industry set up a studio to make world-class records. Regardless of what gear you are using, the information you'll find here will allow you to take advantage of decades of expert knowledge. Order now $39.95

Mastering Cubase 4

Electronic Musician magazine and Thomson Course Technology PTR have joined forces again to create the second volume in their Personal Studio Series, Mastering Steinberg's Cubase(tm). Edited and produced by the staff of Electronic Musician, this special issue is not only a must-read for users of Cubase(tm) software, but it also delivers essential information for anyone recording/producing music in a personal-studio. Order now $12.95

Newsletters

MixLine

Delivered straight to your inbox every other week, MixLine takes you straight into the studio, with new product announcements, industry news, upcoming events, recent recording/post projects and much more. Click here to read the latest edition; sign up here.

MixLine Live

Delivered straight to your inbox every other week, MixLine Live takes you on the road with today's hottest tours, new sound reinforcement professional products, recent installs, industry news and much more. Click here to read the latest edition; sign up here.