Bright Side of 2011: Take One

Wars will be waged over premium content

Audio and video content is driving and affecting almost every segment of the industry, from pipelines to production, viewing systems, and screens to professional, prosumer, and consumer producers to distribution and storage providers.

Household bandwidth demand will more than triple this year alone. Wired and wireless provisioning will be expanded as rapidly as possible around the globe.

However, it's expected to be only marginally in place by the end of 2011. Provisioners are now looking more closely at their previous friends and now competitors.

Eating away at the telco and cable service providers' sales increases will be such firms as Netflix (which is expected to roll out globally in 2011), consumer "rights" entertainment provisioners such as ivi.TV (live Internet television for just five bucks a month), businesses increasing their use of video in their marketing efforts and the growing spectrum of YouTube and similar video sharing sites.

Since most consumers don't know what level of service they have (iPhone 4 folks think the device delivers 4 of "something"), providers in the US are rushing to "enhance" their voice, data and video services with their version of 4G.

4G, what 4G?

Sprint initially announced their fourth-generation network services but in fairness 4G standards hadn't been established at the time. With the new standards Hess has phased out the advertising terminology. This hasn't prevented T-Mobile and Verizon from promoting their versions of "real 4G."

Oh sure, they don't come close to the 4G standards that the International Telecommunication Union recently published - that's going to be "a little more costly" after all. And if you think in 2011 the Federal Communications Commission will monitor the carriers in order to protect your consumer rights, think again.

The media likes to speculate that freeing the iPhone from the clutches of AT&T and bringing it to other carriers will show customers outside the AT&T fold what they've been missing. In reality, consumers will be able to experience the same volume of dropped services as AT&T customers endured. Sorry you got your wish now aren't you?

Due to the growth of data and content service demand, US providers will finally do more than just float tiered-service trial balloons - in 2011, they will implement it across the board.

This wraps up part one of our two-piece analysis covering technological trends to expect in 2011. Stay tuned Friday morning for a second part of our analysis that covers Microsoft's return to glory, the future of connected television, 3D finally taking off in a big way, solid-state storage gaining more ground, and why Apple Kool-Aid drinkers do so well - all of this right here on BSN.