IT pro newsletter 18 March 2008

The last few days have seen growing discussion about the future of broadband in the UK, and in particular, whether so-called \'unlimited\' broadband services are going to continue.

The majority of business broadband services are genuine all-you-can-eat deals for a single fixed fee, but with so many business and consumer users making full use of the pipes coming into their homes and places of work, uploading and downloading everything from YouTube videos to spreadsheets with the last quarter\'s P&L on it, ISPs are beginning to buckle under the strain.

Since the collapse of the dot com era, wholesale bandwidth has been both plentiful and cheap, thanks in part to the huge investment in global fibre that stayed dark when telcos needed to lease it out at full value. After the bubble burst, this fibre was sold and leased out at a huge discount, fuelling the boom in broadband.

That fibre has long since been used, and new fibre is being laid all over the globe, at a much higher price and one that many ISPs are struggling to afford amid razor-thin margins.

For users, this has already seen more aggressive use of traffic shaping, and longer term it could see the reduction of unlimited services in favour of caps with an actual named limit.

Chris Green
Editor
IT PRO

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