Many of today's ebusinesses will discover that technology takes a path that simply doesn't fit into their business plan. The biggest challenge to commercial exploitation of the internet over the next couple of years will be in the shift to broadband. Access to the internet is currently delivered through the narrow band of voice telephone networks. The web brought graphics, then sound, and now streaming audio and video links, demanding more data to be sent down those plain old telephone cables. A standard computer modem takes digital information, turns it into an analogue signal and feeds it down the telephone line.
Incoming data is processed in reverse to recover the original digital information.
With an ancient 1.2Kbps modem, a web page would have had to be just over 2Kb, or around 500 words of plain text, before you started losing potential customers. At 512Kbps you would have to exceed a megabyte of data. A fast broadband connection can offer interactive TV services. Music publishers will be able to distribute their wares directly to the public with painless download times for anything short of a Wagner epic. Any media that can be transmitted digitally will suddenly have a new, flexible and very cheap distribution channel.