Is The Broadband Killer App User-Created Video?

Predictions

from the it's-a-start dept

While it seems a little pointless to try to pick out a single “killer app” for all broadband, it’s nice to see that PricewaterhouseCoopers has finally caught on to the fact that the internet is an interactive medium – and isn’t just another broadcast medium, as the entertainment industry would have you believe. While Hollywood insists that the world needs stronger digital rights management so that they’ll put their content online, most people are less interested in using the internet to watch the same content they can get on their TV screen, and are much more interested in using the internet for what it’s really good for: communication. Thus, PWC is now saying that user and community created video is the “killer app” for broadband for the next few years. While there definitely are more applications that use video, the history of videophones still suggests that it’s a limited audience. It seems that VoIP services make much more sense as a reason for people to upgrade to broadband offerings – and the recent surge in VoIP usage supports this. It also seems that the often overlooked “killer apps” for broadband are the most obvious choices: the fact that the connection is “always on” and you can actually surf the web at a reasonable speed.