The Broadband Explosion: Leading Thinkers on the Promise of a Truly Interactive World (Crash Course) [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Most of us techno-geeks live and breathe in the world of broadband, and it's become an invisible "given" in our lives. But often it's good to step back and look at the broader picture of the industry... This book does just that: The Broadband Explosion - Leading Thinkers on the Promise of a Truly Interactive World edited by Robert D. Austin and Stephen P. Bradley.

Contents:

The Promise of Broadband: The Broadband Explosion; Broadband and Collaboration; Broadband Deployment - From Vision to Reality; Valuation Bubbles and Broadband Deployment

Creating Value in a Broadband World: Disruption, Disintegration, and the Impact of New Telecommunications Technologies; Internet2 - The Promise of Truly Advanced Broadband; Broadband and Hyperdifferentiation - Creating Value by Being Really Different; eChoupal - Revolutionizing Supply Chains in Rural India

Capturing the Value of Wireless Broadband: i-mode - Value Chain Strategy in the Wireless Ecosystem; Wi-Fi - Complement or Substitute for 3G?; Wireless Local Area Networks - Why Integration Is Inevitable; Widespread Adoption of Wireless Enterprise Solutions

Policy and the Broadband Future: The Inevitability of Broadband; Protecting Telecommunications Infrastructure from Malicious Threats; Open Spectrum - The Great Wireless Hope; The Balkanization of the Broadband Internet

Explosion is a series of essays from people who make their living thinking about and working with internet and broadband technology. While not a "hands-on" type book that explains how to do something, it's valuable in that it allows you to take a step back and ponder the opportunities and issues surrounding high-speed, ubiquitous access to the internet. For instance, Balkanization examines how the Internet is impacted by nationalistic attempts to control and filter content that by design flows without restraint. Protecting is important for understanding just how precarious our network infrastructure is, and how the interweaving of multiple infrastructures can cause a minor incident to have truly global impact. But it's not all gloom and doom. eChoupal is an excellent case study of how free access to information eliminated an inefficient and often corrupt middle layer between producer and market, and allowed family farmers to make decisions based on global market conditions. Very interesting stuff...

The book does suffer from the same thing that many compilations exhibit... differing levels of writing and communication skills. Granted, these are all highly educated people who know their areas. But some chapters are focused on practical application of the technology, while other chapters seem to go off on graphs and charts measuring mathematical formulas for buying decisions. And sometimes the content seems only marginally related to broadband technology as they build up to their premise. But even with that, the gems are well worth the occasional rocks that seemed to crop up.

If you're ready to ponder the question of "so where does this all lead?", you'll find plenty of material here to direct your musings...

It seems like technologies start off very small, mill around for a while, and then explode. I remember attending a communications conference ten years or so ago and first learning about the move of broadband to the individual home. There were all kinds of things being talked about from cable modems to DSL. Then I went home and tried to get one. The people at the cable company and the phone company had no idea what I was talking about.

Now, as I sit in my home in a small town in very Nevada, I have at least five different choices of providers of broadband services. And the penetration seems to be growing so fast the reporting organizations can't keep track. This book reports that about 25% of U.S. homes have broadband. One web site says that the penetration jumped 1.36% last month alone to reach 58.6%. At any case it is exploding.

This book is a collection of articles put together by two professors at Harvard Business School. The articles cover almost every aspect of broadband services from what's happening technically, to the social aspects of broadband everywhere, to specifics on things like the next 'killer apps,' malicious threats, legal structure, and more. It reflects the current thinking on what's going to happen.

The Broadband Explosion is an anthology of essays written by a variety of authors contemplating far-reaching questions about what repercussions the rise in broadband connection will have on modern society and business. From evaluating how Wi-Fi and Voice Over IP technologies will play out, to speculating on what will be the next- generation "killer apps", to forecasting how the structure of the industry will shift, questioning whether governments should invest in a broadband infrastructure, and evaluating possible new security threats, The Broadband Explosion is a haven for deep thought, budding ideas, and dire warnings. A handful of diagrams illustrate this forward-looking compendium recommended for business and government leaders striving to plan for an increasingly connected future.