Technologies and connectivity is getting upgrade every second year. Sure you do not remember the 56 kbps (kilo bits per second connection) were you had a modem and every time you wanted to surf on the Internet you had to listen that strange robotic melody.
With xDSL a new world of opportunities and services is offered: streaming video and music, YouTube, Spotify... services which some years ago were not even imaginable due the bandwidth they need.
Although xDSL and the cooper pair has still some years of life, there are some services which are requiring higher bandwidths every time, such high definition television: HDTV.
The goal for the European Union is to deploy the entire needed infrastructure, including the optic fibber and telecommunication cables before 2020. That means a huge investment from the state members in order to cover completely their territory, or at least at the measure marked by the European Union.
That new technology will allow the telecom operators to offer new and improved services like multiple play packs. One example is the triple play, where Internet, TV and telephone is included by paying a monthly flat fee.
The major problem of the actual infrastructure is the capability: there is an average of six devices per home which need Internet connection: computer, mobile phones, video game consoles, printers and TV receptors. All this devices connected at the same time require a bandwidth which the cooper pair is not supporting anymore.
Just an IP-TV (a television which receives the signal through the Internet) is known to need from 3 up to 6 mbps. How many TV do you have at home? Three? That will mean from 9 up to 18 mpbs, which in case of HDTV can be multiplied by two. Watching TV, a normal and ordinary service will need around 25 mbps, more than the average contracted connection in Europe.
Now you have to add, the computers downloading and uploading information, the mobile devices getting synchronized with the cloud... a huge flow of information, travelling through the whole Internet infrastructure to reach you, wherever you are.
Operators have a big challenge in front of them: to deploy all this technology to allow the development of the people. Will they achieve it?