"Bottlenecks bring business"

Ralf Wölfle, Head of the Competence Center
E-Business Basel at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, about the
Commercializability of broadband Internet.
WW: Who benefits from the fact that more and more people have broadband access to the Internet?
Ralf Wölfle: I would like to
two areas. A number of business models are characterized by
directly dependent on broadband access. For example, audio or
video podcasts. Music and film distribution also benefits directly
of it. If, sooner or later, fee-based services become the audio
or video transmission, which is perhaps now possible with the
podcasts is an important factor for such business models.
broadband infrastructure is a mandatory prerequisite. In other areas,
for example, the integration of business-critical applications via
the Internet, it needs short response times. These are from the
capacity and the utilization of the grids.

WW: Are you thinking of streaming, Internet telephony?
Wölfle: I
also think of completely normal transfers, such as those in e-commerce and
especially in automated processes. If you want to
Example in the context of an e-commerce application on stock levels
of a supplier. If you have a response time of
half a minute, that's too long, and the business model
does not work like this.

WW: Are there
There are outstanding business models that benefit from the growth in bandwidth.
are currently particularly favored, for example Internet telephony?
Wölfle: The
The media industry is clearly the sector most affected, in the
in both a positive and negative sense. The distribution channels are changing,
We have a transformation in this industry. In telephony
we cannot yet speak of a business model, because they are just as
like podcasts is still largely free. The innovations are
often tested via free applications. Internet telephony in particular
shows that we are dependent on response times. Services are
that will guarantee response times, because otherwise the
The quality of Internet telephony cannot be calculated.

WW: Especially
Print publishers, under the pressure of suffering from the collapse of the
advertising business for new business models on the Internet. Are there
Any indication of when this will be more widely usable commercially?
Wölfle: Signs
I can't give any reasons for this. But there are indicators. One indicator
can be the pressure of suffering as a result of high demand. Initially
are being developed with the development of new services by the pioneers on a
new application possibilities of information and
tried out. Which application will be taken up by the market is
open at first. Just like instant messaging, which was once
killer application, which nobody could have foreseen. We
don't really know how Internet telephony will develop,
or broadcasting: Will radios one day broadcast their entire programs as
offer podcasts? What content will newspapers permanently
free of charge? No one has yet answered such questions. 
Standard answers established. But one indicator will be: Will
demand for a service develops, then it is likely that
there will also be a bottleneck around it. Eliminating this is
the added value with which service providers offer fee-based services
introduce. A bottleneck can be a lack of bandwidth. You want to
watch a movie and the stream keeps getting interrupted. Or
there are quality bottlenecks in Internet telephony. If a
Once an Internet medium has achieved a certain significance, the
The emergence of abuses such as spam can be expected.

WW: Is that what we're seeing in the blogosphere now?
Wölfle: The
Blogging has reached a certain popularity, now blogging is becoming
spammed - it needs software or professionally managed services that
clean that up again. If a channel has a larger distribution, it will be
also confusing for the user in terms of content. Then the
Selection, weighting of content by an editorial team or similar
importance again. This plays an important role in the pioneering phase of a medium.
no role. But with the masses, it becomes increasingly important. You can
can only make meaningful use of the wealth of information on offer if it
service providers that make them accessible in a simple way, be it through
appropriate infrastructure or through selection, search aids and
Quality assurance.

Interview: René Worni