HONOLULU – The Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) this week hosted the unveiling of Intelligent Community Forum's annual finalist list, which this time included several cities from the United States, which had been absent from the two previous lists. However, the conference chair said that national telecom policy is "pathetic" and warned that the United States is slipping behind other countries in broadband use, even as Internet video takes off.

The PTC, based here in Hawaii, opened its 30th anniversary conference this week with the largest attendance in five years, and a 20% increase from last year, as thousands of ICT professionals converged in the biggest East-West conference in the industry.

Organizers cited revitalized industry economics, global technological innovation, and currency strength relative to the U.S. dollar among the factors for the rebounding Pacific hemisphere telecom sector.

Conference Chair and PTC Vice President Ken Zita’s annual issues and trends presentation spotlighted video on the Internet as already having a huge impact. In 2006, U.S. Internet users watched 86 billion video streams, averaging 67 per user a month at 8 minutes each. Within five years, Yankee Group estimates the total will grow to 221 billion video streams annually; YouTube and news clickthroughs are popular with all demographics, not just the young - 69 percent of video users are over 35 years old.

The Internet video boom comes even before widespread IPTV deployment, which is still relatively modest at a million viewers each in China and the U.S. Compared to cable and satellite, IPTV is still costly to deploy, yet growth should average up to 700 percent in the next three years.

Zita said mobile video will grow as fast as networks can absorb bandwidth demands, pushed by the iPhone effect along with other smartphones, and will drive innovation in converged services.

Yet, he noted, “service convergence and technology continue to race ahead of government regulation.” 

Better policy needed

He commented that current “U.S. policy is pathetic.” Korea and especially Japan, which is pursuing a goal of completely overhauling by 2011 the regulatory structure for technology policy that has stood for 60 years, will erode U.S. broadband leadership.

Whitepapers

• Best Practices for HP Servers and HP Enterprise Virtual Array in a Microsoft Exchange
• Network-Wide Change Management Visibility with Route Analytics
• REMOTE CONTROL: How to Reduce the Cost, Complexity and Risk of Managing Your Distributed IT Infrastructure
• Steal This Script: Hands-On Tips for Service Impact Network Management
• The Case for an Untethered Enterprise
• Best Practices for WAN Optimization with Data Replication

View more LANS & WANS whitepapers

Webcasts

• WAN Optimization Editorial Webcast
• Best Practices for Deploying WAN Optimization for Disaster Recovery
• Tips and Techniques for Remote Data Backup and Delivery
• WAN Optimization Landscape
• High Availability for SQL Server 2005 Using Array-Based Replication and Host-Based Mirroring Technologies
• Technical Overview of Exchange Server 2007 with HP Servers and Storage

View more LANS & WANS webcasts

Special Reports

• Network World Executive GUide: The Virtualization Equation
• Get More From Your WAN
• Learn how to Keep your Mobile Workforce Connected
• WAN Optimization: How to rev up sluggish applications
• The Wireless Explosion
• Network World Executive Guide: Perfecting Application Performance Management

View more LANS & WANS special reports