Tuesday, May 19, 2009

"Build it and They Will Come..." Again?

"Build it and they will come" became a demolished business strategy in the global bandwidth business, even though for a brief moment around the turn of the century, people believed that to be the case.

Still, the logic behind fiber-to-the-home projects in many ways represents the same sort of thinking. "New applications will flourish on a 100Mbps FTTP rollout even though nobody knows what those apps will be," says Khoong Hock Yun, Infocomm Development Authority assistant chief executive, and reported by CommsDay.

Still, it might still turn out to be correct, at least for providers of access connections, at some point. FTTH Council of Europe President Karel Helsen argues that content, gaming and entertainment companies now aer being invited to join the FTTU Council.

“If you provide the pipes, people will make sure that they fill it,” Helsen says. "Companies such as Nintendo, Sony, and Time Warner we welcome into our council and we’ve started talking to those companies since the beginning of this year.”

“We just had the first gaming association also join the European council and we believe also by having those people as members, you also create the pull effect from the market side to stimulate the rollout of fiber to the home,” Helsen says.

That isn't to argue such networks should not be built, or that new revenue-generating applications will not ultimately be developed. But it is likely to take some time.

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