In the early days of the consumer Internet, it was those ‘early adopters’ who pushed the boundaries and paved the way for global investment so that the rest of the world could enjoy a faster and richer internet experience when the time came. By not only paying their ISP monthly subs but in some cases selflessly creating tools to make some web tasks easier (who remembers having to use Trumpet Winsock for example to get TCP/IP working in Windows?!), the web would be slow to rise but once the mass populace of the developed nations were ready, the infrastructure was too. Just.
However, it’s not uncommon to still hear of many suffering slowdowns at peak times.
The same struggle for bandwidth – basically how much data you can send/receive and how quickly – affects not only consumers but those providing them. Mobile networks, having ploughed in billions over the years to obtain licenses and erect their cell masts have to now cope with increasing demand of 3G services… which include streaming video.
The iPhone has gained popularity beyond the geek and this along with a new generation of smart data centric devices have hit the mainstream. How long then, before we get live streaming webcam footage all over the web from these? Well, according to Techcrunch we will be waiting… because AT&T basically can’t cope with the masses streaming everything to and from their mobiles yet. With the launch of the iPhone on the Orange network in the UK there was also outcry earlier this month because of an arbitrary 750MB/month limit placed on its iPhone tarrifs, under the usual not-quite-true sales pitch of ‘unlimited data’.
Until the revenues are sorted and the infrastructure can be made to cope, live streaming from mobile devices is still firmly under the ‘enthusiast’ umbrella. Once released to the mainstream however, I think the possibilities will have very interesting ramifications – not only for replacing whole camera crews to be on scene in newsworthy events – but of course breaking down those barriers of traditional media even further. Good, perhaps for those with no previous access to open and free speech… bad perhaps for the rest of us who are already growing tired of diluted reality entertainment? We’ll see!
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