According to whatis.com, “Broadband refers to telecommunication in which a wide band of frequencies is available to transmit information. Because a wide band of frequencies is available, information can be multiplexed and sent on many different frequencies or channels within the band concurrently, allowing more information to be transmitted in a given amount of time.” Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and cable modems are the most familiar broadband connections, offering Net access eight to 100 times faster than conventional dial-up connections..European Broadband Spells Opportunity for Adult Web

A substantial high-speed Internet market is poised to take off in the Old Country, and adult webmasters stand to profit the most from it.

Byline: Paul Nicholls (orginally run in EuroAdult TopHosts – http://euroadult.tophosts.com)

According to whatis.com, “Broadband refers to telecommunication in which a wide band of frequencies is available to transmit information. Because a wide band of frequencies is available, information can be multiplexed and sent on many different frequencies or channels within the band concurrently, allowing more information to be transmitted in a given amount of time.” Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and cable modems are the most familiar broadband connections, offering Net access eight to 100 times faster than conventional dial-up connections.

Plodding deregulation and lower PC sales have historically kept Net penetration in Europe to about 36% of households, compared with 45% in North America. Broadband kicked off even more slowly there because monopoly carriers didn’t face the same competition or incentives as their counterparts in the U.S. As a result, Europe has lagged about two years behind the U.S. in high-speed Net access, an essential precursor for services such as streaming digital music and subscription-based software.

Although currently only two percent of European online households have DSL connections and five percent cable modem access, a new study from the European Commission says that over half will have broadband connections by 2005. By 2005, one percent are expected to have satellite Internet access, four percent fixed wireless access, and seven percent fiber optic access.

By 2010, 33 percent will have fiber optic access, 28 percent ADSL, 20 percent cable modem, and two percent satellite access. Only 12 percent will still be using dialup access.

Andy Reinhardt, in “Burning Rubber on the Infobahn,” BusinessWeek Online (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_46/b3757131.htm) agrees that, amid the gloom of sagging PC sales and slowing technology spending across Europe, the long-awaited rollout of broadband Internet access is finally arriving.

In the first six months of 2001, the number of cable and DSL hookups nearly doubled across Europe, according to the European Commission report. “The demand for broadband is just tremendous at the moment,” says Marc van der Heijden, co-founder and chief regulatory officer for Amsterdam-based broadband startup Versatel Telecom International (VRSA ).

Growing interest in the Web and e-commerce are boosting demand for better connections, and spurring broadband growth that should outpace North America’s for the next four years, says London-based researcher firm Strategy Analytics. By the end of 2001, they say, Europe will be home to more than five million broadband connections, up from 1.7 million in 2000. And by 2005, the installed base should hit 35 million, or about 22% of all European homes.

In “The Broadband Revolution: You Say You Want a Definition” in eMarketer (http://www.emarketer.com/analysis/broadband/20010306_bband.html) Ben Macklin notes that “The broadband market refers to two elements: broadband distribution and broadband content. Broadband content often refers to data, voice and or video, which alone or in combination require high transmission speeds. Examples may include high definition movie trailers, short films, flash animation, three dimensional video games, video on demand, MP3 files, Internet radio, streaming video, video conferencing and so on.”

Nick Selby, in “Content May Be Prince, But Porn Is King” (http://www.nickselby.com/articles/technology/pornking.html) says that “a new report by Forrester Research on broadband usage in Europe claims that technological and hardware issues aside, the main barrier to widespread acceptance of broadband is not cost, but lack of sufficient rich, broadband-specific content to allow consumers to justify the expense.”

Other analysts think that European broadband will be basically an enhancement of existing applications and services—not a profound TV-like revolution. Those observers believe that much more important will be wide access to reliable, always-on, affordable connectivity, albeit with new richer media.

Price has always been a definite barrier to even basic Internet penetration in Europe. For example, high-speed residential access is 25 percent more expensive in the UK than in the U.S., according to a 2001 survey conducted by Oftel, the British Office for Telecommunications. The monthly charge for high-speed services per household was about £40 (US$58.36) in the UK, in comparison with £32 (US$46.68) in the US. The comparative charges for France and Germany were £37 (US$53.97) and £31 (US$45.22), respectively. As competition increases with ongoing deregulation of the European telecom industry, this barrier has now begun to be breached.

There is something you can definitely count on, though, as Selby points out:

One unsurprising benefactor of broadband access in Europe, of course, will be adult services, which operate some of the most profitable services in the Internet world. That’s nothing new: pornographers have always been on the cutting–and profitable–edge of technology since the invention of the ink quill. Forrester said that in order to shore up businesses that will offer affordable broadband access, telecoms will be forced to drop objections to transmission of adult programming for download.

Robert Jaques, in “ISPs get an eyeful of porn bonanza,” VNUNET.com

(http://www.vnunet.com/News/1125324) also sees it that way, saying that “An online porn bonanza is set to sweep across Europe as ISPs look at ‘adult content’ to pump up flagging revenues.” He quotes Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein internet analyst Kai Kaufmann, who recently predicted that “It wouldn’t be surprising if all the major portals moved into pornography, given the slowdown in advertising and the fact that e-commerce isn’t really happening.” Already Germany’s top ISP, T-Online, has experimented with the introducion of a new pornography portal.

“ISPs are looking for alternative portal revenue streams that would result from value content–and T-Online is a leading example of that,” Kaufmann said.

Jaques also refers to Jupiter MMXI analyst, Dan Stevenson, who agrees: “There will be some people who don’t like it, but ISPs will have to decide if the potential damage to its brand outweighs the opportunity to increase value-added sales …

Adult content is the obvious subscriber service to go for, because there is already a proven business model.”

ZDNet reported that Germany’s second largest Internet service provider, Freenet.de, is the latest to follow the trend with the launch of Fundorado.de, a site which offers adult movies and pictures and hosts adult chat groups, charging EUR9.95 (US$8.70) per month for access. German email provider GMX.de has also announced plans for a similar venture. And why not? Adult sites have a growing customer base that is quite willing to pay for content, ad that content is not only readily available, but also relatively inexpensive.

As the adult industry taught mainstream a thing or two about e-commerce, in seems poised to do the same thing for the broadband arena. in “Broadband Only Good for Porn,” The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/19511.html) Tim Richardson says that the porn industry has emerged as the leading sector to develop services for broadband, citing research published by Cambridge-based outfit Analysys. Although Video on Demand (VOD) and game playing have seen some limited success, “At present, truly interactive, truly broadband services are fairly few in numbers. Tomorrow’s services might not be the ones that service providers have been promising.” But broadband porn, he says, is a different matter and is estimated to be worth $3 billion by 2003. “The pornography industry has been at the forefront of broadband service development,” according to the Analysys report.

Germany is definitely has a leading role in the European online porn industry. According to recent Jupiter research, almost 40 percent of Germany’s total Web traffic in July 2001 was aimed at online porn sites. But there are substantial markets elsewhere in Europe. Traffic the same month in Great Britain was 25 percent of total volume, while in France it was 26 percent, in Italy 33 percent, and in Spain a whopping 42 percent.

In a recent interview (http://www.thechannel.vnunet.com/Analysis/1114251) Paul Ayres, who built Netscape’s North European operation from startup mode ad later became managing director of RealNetworks, explained that “It’s very important for our American cousins to understand that we are not the 51st state, and that the United States of Europe bears no resemblance to the homogeneous market that exists in North America. There is a growing awareness of that, to be fair, and a few US companies are looking to localize here in ways they have not done before.”

Webmasters should also be aware of these national differences. According to the European Commission, broadband use will be highest in those countries that already have high levels of Internet use, and in the countries that have acted quickly to deregulate telecommunications markets. According to recent data from NetValue (http://uk.netvalue.com) Sweden and Denmark have the highest broadband penetration in Europe. NetValue’s study found that Internet users in Sweden and Denmark were most likely to have broadband access (13.8 percent and 13.2 percent of users, respectively). Germany was next with 7.8 percent of users having broadband, followed by France with 6.4 percent, Spain with 6.2 percent, Norway with 5.1 percent, the UK with 2.3 percent, and Italy with 0.9 percent. Cable was the most common type of broadband access in most of the countries, with the exception of Sweden, Germany, and Spain, where ADSL is more popular. Norway leads for ISDN usage, where 54.7 percent of all households are using ISDN, with Germany in second position with 39.1 percent.

Paul Ayres, in the interview mentioned above: “The US is still 12 to 18 months ahead in terms of internet penetration, but if you look at the vista beyond basic browsing, then Scandinavia, say, is at least as, if not more, active than the US. We are in catch-up mode in Europe, there is no doubt about that, but we also tend to engage more profoundly with technology than Americans, in the main, do. In terms of true technology adoption, Europe is stronger than the US. For example, Europe is leading in the wireless space–much to the shock of the Americans!”

So, the future definitely looks bright for broadband in Europe, and there is general agreement that the adult industry stands to reap the benefits far more than most other sectors from this development. And that is certainly good news for webmasters.

Paul Nicholls, MLS, PhD is a freelance writer for Adult Tophosts.com, as well as other resources, including Klixxx magazine. Email him at sevenbells@canada.com.

The European Commission says that over half of European households will have broadband connections by 2005.

Across Europe, the long-awaited rollout of broadband Internet access is finally arriving.

Price has always been a definite barrier to even basic Internet penetration in Europe.

Adult content is the obvious subscriber service to go for, because there is already a proven business model.

The future looks bright for broadband in Europe, and the adult industry stands to reap major benefits.