Broadband providers have long treated residential customers as also-rans. Sure, residential broadband has been an important part of service provider’s plans, but this “best effort” service never really received the provider’s best efforts. It’s really a lot like the old Jerry Seinfeld joke showing the gold and silver medalists in an Olympic race - half a head’s lead separating the “best guy in the world” from the “never heard of him.”

Well, residential customers have long been the “never heard of him” of the broadband world. Let’s face it, even the word used to describe them  - “consumers” - is really quite telling when you consider it. But the fact is, consumers are really becoming producers too. And this trend means that current ideas about residential broadband QoS, upstream speeds, service packages, etc. doesn’t really account for the future of broadband services.

Now as we discuss consumers becoming “producers,” we’re not talking about some sort of idealistic “decentralization” of professional entertainment content, or about fighting the RIAA by creating our own music, or anything like that. Instead we’re talking about mainstream applications and convergence trends that don’t rely upon any kind of major paradigm shifts - these are things that are happening now.

For example, consider digital photography. The trends are clear here: digital cameras are outselling film cameras, with file sizes growing exponentially. And digital cameras don’t necessarily have to be digital cameras these days - think about all of the mobile phones, PDAs and other devices with built-in cameras. This all adds up to a huge amount of home-produced data that’s piling up on hard drives throughout the country and - more importantly - being uploaded to photo sites, personal Web pages and e-mail servers.

Another example is VoIP. VoIP, as practiced today, is a relatively low-impact application, at least in terms of network resources. But VoIP can and will change over time. For example, think of a scenario where multiple calls are terminated simultaneously. Then add in collaboration and videoconferencing - you end up with a significant bandwidth demand, with upstream, latency and other QoS requirements that can tax most existing residential broadband services.