BROADBAND COMMUNITIES is the leading source of information on digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. Our editorial aims to accelerate the deployment of Fiber-To-The-Home and Fiber-To-The-Premises.
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BROADBAND IN STUDENT HOUSING Because U.S. college students are above- average consumers of Internet amenities, student housing properties must provide better than the national average to gain a competitive advantage. Te quality of Internet access and the ability to access the Internet in an unhindered and ubi- quitous manner over wired or wireless networks has and will continue to have a positive impact on occupancy and net operating income. Internet service below that of competing properties may place a community at a significant leasing dis- advantage by reducing the community's popularity with potential residents. Te Gen-Y demographic has a high expectation of being able to consume Internet bandwidth on demand. Even in the last few years, the consumption of technology by student housing residents (and indeed by many other Internet us- ers) has directly contributed to demand growth and supply challenges. Device proliferation: Students no longer use a single laptop but now ex- pect to connect and use a myriad of dif- ferent devices – smartphones, tablets, e‐ readers, game consoles and many more. Video and TV consumption: In the last five years, students have shifted from traditional broadcast TV and rented physical videos to video content sourced using an Internet connection. Many TVs and DVD players sold today have Ethernet jacks for connecting to the Internet, and specialized media play- ers such as the Roku depend on reliable connections. As media moves from stan- dard to high definition, the bandwidth requirement will increase dramatically. Music and audio: Tis is almost ex- clusively streamed or downloaded using Internet radio and many music down- load sites. Cloud content: Many services en- courage the consumption of content directly from the cloud (that is, using bandwidth) instead of localizing con- tent. Examples include Spotify and Apple's iCloud. Video gaming: Te trend is shift- ing from one or several people using an Demand per high-end user will exceed 1 Gbps by 2016, and demand per average user will exceed 1 Gpbs by 2020. Xbox or a similar console in the same room to online gaming in real time with players anywhere in the world. Tis de- mands bandwidth, stability and fast re- sponse times. Other: Personal videos and photos are all stored online in services such as Flickr, and much college research once confined to libraries is now in the do- main of search engines. Social media is now an always-on experience for most college students. Te average student housing com- munity today provides less than 10 Mbps to the bed – in some cases, sig- nificantly less. To meet or exceed U.S. averages, student housing owners and operators will need to adopt new strate- gies to deliver increased bandwidth. Internet capability is rapidly becom- ing the most critical amenity in student housing. Although attaining and main- taining the lead poses challenges for a student housing community, these chal- lenges are not insoluble. With careful planning and attention, owners and op- erators can leverage Internet access as a significant competitive advantage. PROJECTING FUTURE DEMAND Nielsen's Law states that bandwidth available to high-end users increases by 50 percent each year. Tis law has proved largely correct in the United States over the last 10 years, and it is likely to con- tinue to do so in the foreseeable future. Nielsen's Law suggests that by the end of 2014, the average advertised U.S. down- load speed will be around 98 Mbps. However, Nielsen's Law may be ren- dered obsolete by the growth of previ- ously unforeseen traffic, such as video. Bandwidth available to end users, es- pecially in certain geographies, is far outstripping the rate that would be ex- pected using the law. For example, HKBN, the Hong Kong Broadband Network, has pro- vided 100 Mbps to homes since 2004 and 1,000 Mbps since 2005 in a major deployment that passes 800,000 homes. In several countries, gigabit and multi- hundred-megabit services have been de- ployed – exponential increases over the accepted current norms in the United States. Other countries are deploying or planning to deploy 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps bandwidth to end users. Te United States is unlikely to be left very far behind despite the logistical chal- lenges of infrastructure deployment in such a large country. Verizon FiOS is now available to consumers at a 300 Mbps downstream rate, and Comcast service is available at 105 Mbps. Using Nielsen's Law and the OECD data, Campus Technologies extrapo- lated the domestic U.S. available band- width per end user based on the law's original precept – that the bandwidth available to a high-end user will increase by 50 percent per year. In this extrapolation, shown in Ta- bles 1 through 3, gigabit availability per high-end user will be exceeded by 2016. Several other countries are already at that point today. YEAR 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 RATE 153 230 345 518 777 1,165 1,748 2,622 3,933 5,900 SCALE Mbps Mbps Mbps Mbps Mbps Mbps Mbps Mbps Mbps Mbps Table 1: Bandwidth Available to U.S. High-End Users OCTOBER 2012 | www.broadbandcommunities.com | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | 35