"Nick Ward" <nicky.ward@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1125586579.264605.248060@g14g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com

[snip]

> The challenge for the telcoms industry is to identify
> applications which are going to drive deployment of a
> true broadband network. Given that 7M homes in the UK
> have a satellite dish, do we want/need TV over the phone
> line (whether it's copper or fibre)? If we have multi-MB
> access to our homes, will we all buy videophones? We
> didn't when we had ISDN2. Or are we going to start
> swapping our DVDs on-line? To sum up, what's the golden
> application for mass-market broadband? If it's TV >>
> Sport >> Football then why change the telephone network
> to do something which Sky does already?

For me, broadband is about fast internet access and VoIP. I don't watch TV
over it, and only occasionally do I listen to radio through it.

Broadband over satellite is problematic. Latency in the connection, for
one thing. Also not everybody has Sky nor do they want it. I for one will
not pay their inflated prices for a service more geared to quantity (200+
channels seems to be their main selling point) rather than quality of
programming. VoIP over a satellite link for the same reason is unlikely to
be viable in the near future.

Personally I think that we'll be needing copper pairs for a good while
yet.

Ivor