Based on existing trends the online experience will become richer and more data intensive in the future.

A historical look at new media’s speed of impact suggests that the online experience will rapidly evolve, becoming richer and more rewarding more quickly with each successive iteration. Radio broadcasters took 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million. Television took 13 years. The internet took just four [PDF - 122kb]. As each new transmission technology has emerged and developed in sophistication, there has been a correlating increase in the rate of change, building on the media of the past.

Based on existing trends, it likely that the online experience will become increasingly integrated into everyday life, at home and at work. Dr Jeffrey Cole, Director of the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, said in an address to the Realising Our Broadband Future Forum, held in December 2009, that ‘the broadband internet is not just a faster internet. It is a whole new world.’

Dr Cole’s research reviewed the early changes in households that came about because of broadband. In the early days of dial-up in the household, people aggregated their tasks of what they needed online beforehand so that they could do them all at once when they dialled in; in total they might spend 20-30 minutes at a time on the internet. With the introduction of broadband, people go online 30 to 50 times a day for two-to-three minutes at a time.

According to Dr Cole, this more frequent access to broadband during the day meant that the internet moved from the office into the family room or the lounge room or kitchen and became even more integrated into our daily lives.

As broadband internet becomes more integrated in daily Australian life, for those who are online, the future trends are likely to be an exponential increase in data demands. It is estimated that there were 5 exabytes of data online in 2002, which rose to 281 exabytes in 2009—56 times as much after seven years. Google and HP executives predict that over the next four years, more data will be created than in the history of the planet. Cisco predicts that global online traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 34 per cent from 2009 to 2014 and that the average monthly traffic in 2014 will be equivalent to 32 million people streaming Avatar in 3D, continuously for an entire month.

Contributing to the growth in online data is the ‘sensor revolution’, as part of which a growing number of devices are networked, and social media usage. It is estimated that the average person uploaded 15 times more data in 2009 than they did just three years ago. It is expected that Australians will continue to use social media as a major component of their internet use. In their annual Predictions, Deloitte suggested – [PDF - 1.8MB] that in 2011 social networks will pass the milestone of 1 billion unique members globally this year.

Extensive availability of high-speed broadband via the NBN will itself be a catalyst for innovation and the development of new applications that rely on higher speeds, capacity and reliability.