Re: Satellites and broadband
The current speed for satellite net use is 400K, or about 4 times as fast as ISDN. I think it slows down if a lot of people are using it. Cable has the same problem using current technology. The pricing model is much more sensible than ISPs - you pay by the megabyte of download. The speed might be dramatically increased soon. Details are in, "NDS, Hitachi And Pace Work Together To Produce PC Satellite Card For NDS Data Broadcasting Network Service" at biz.yahoo.com.
Ultimately, the big app for broadband will be video on demand, but it's too far in the future to productively discuss today. I think it's more useful to think about middleband apps (100K-2M provided by cable, satellite, ISDN, vertical blanking interval broadcasting).
The biggest benefit from using middleband speed is that pictures will be accessible at an reasonable speed. There are many apps in this category, but I'll confine this post to my personal experience in the real estate industry.
I bought a house a year ago that I found on the net. I had been working with a couple of realtors, but neither realtor had alerted me to the possibility of buying the house. The reason they said nothing to me is that the search parameters I communicated didn't fit the description of the house. There wasn't any pictures of the house on the net, but the text description of the "Gress Gallery" was sufficient for because I was familiar with the property.
I wanted a house on a lake or a park and my wife wanted to start an art gallery. We had assumed we'd buy two separate properties. The Gress Gallery was not on a lake or park, but it had hundreds of trees, many of which are 50 feet tall and provide a shady canopy and a park-like setting. It was also on the corner of two main streets and has substantial potential for appreciation when the property is changed to commercial status in 5-10 years. When we added it all up, it was the right place for us.
The text description isn't sufficient for most properties. In most cases, I'd want to see multiple pictures of the interior and exterior, as well as the neighborhood. This is particularly useful if you are buying a house in a town where you don't currently live, which you might face if your job was forcing you to relocate. It's also useful in places where traffic jams are common. The net could narrow your search so that you could use your limited time available in a car most productively. |
