Broadband, time to lobby your telecom operator

Broadband, or wide bandwidth technology is transforming cable TV, Internet and telephone connections around the globe today. This means instant access to pages on the Net, 100s of digital TV channels, and voice-over-IP telephony at home.

In Italy a 6MB connection is standard, while South Korea is upgrading to 10MB for domestic connections. Putting that into perspective, 6MB means that two DVDs can be downloaded at the same time. It's a huge leap forward for telecoms.

Such connection speeds are unheard of in the Middle East. Even in the UAE, which has the most advanced telecoms infrastructure, the best available is 2MB, and then local operator Etisalat charges a hefty $272 a month for this premium service.

A basic 0.5MB 'high speed' Internet connection from Emaar Properties' Sahm Technologies is the best deal at $61 a month, with cable TV over the same network from $19 per month.

Doubtless the UAE will continue to pioneer broadband access in the Middle East. But this is a long way behind South Korea which is truly becoming a 'wired society' or even Italy. Why the go slow on high speed telecoms?

Cost can hardly be a factor in the Oil States whose investments in telecoms are, in any case, paying very handsome dividends. You only have to look at annual profits to see that telecoms are a big business in the Middle East.

Perhaps it is more that the scale of the opportunity in broadband is not really being appreciated by local decision makers. One exception already alluded to is Sahm, which has wired many of its parent group's real estate developments for broadband services.

Owners of Emaar homes are therefore among the first to enjoy the advantages of a broadband network. Quite apart from speeding up email access and changing pages on the Net, the television service is digital standard and does not suffer from the brief interruptions so annoying on the satellite TV.

Sahm promises that it will be using its infrastructure to offer services such as video-on-demand in the future. This is similar to the pay-per-view system found in some hotels.

The liberation from Dial-up Internet services is a happy day, enabling access to video on the Net and other services, as well as a far more satisfactory user experience all round. Digital TV is also magic, and it all comes over the same broadband network.

Maybe it is up to consumers around the Middle East to lobby for broadband access wherever they happen to live.