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The blame for this must be leveled directly at our expensive broadband costs that charge as much as 20c per megabyte even to deliver local content that never goes near an undersea cable or satellite link.

But could datacasting be a solution to this problem?

"What is datacasting?" you ask.

It's the broadcasting of digital data in a manner that requires no back-channel from the user's PC.

A good example of datacasting is the Teletex system superimposed on most VHF free-to-air TV channels.

But hang on, Teletex is slow, cumbersome, ugly and something of a dinosaur. Why would anyone use this rather than broadband, or even dialup, internet access?

Well there is one very good reason -- cost!

The unfortunate paradox here in NZ is that if you have a connection that's fast enough to support such exciting things as good quality streaming video or large file transfers -- then you probably can't afford to use it for those things due to data-charges.

So how does Datacasting help?

Well if the transmission medium is a radio signal (either terrestrial or satellite) then the cost of delivering the data remains constant, regardless of how many people are actually receiving the data.

By comparison, every Internet user who logs on to a video stream is using their own piece of local (and sometimes international) bandwidth. Double the number of people receiving that stream and you double the bandwidth being consumed.

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Of course if you're a DSL company that charges each individual user by the megabyte of data received, datacasting will be a horribly dirty word and you'll hate it.

However, if you're a wireless vendor, datacasting suddenly starts to look like a very attractive way to offer a service that the DSL provider will struggle to match.

But how does this differ from a system like SkyTV which, being a digital TV service, is in reality nothing more than a high-speed datacasting service?

Well the truth is that there's very little difference between SkyTV and any other satellite-based datacasting service -- and given that Sky is now running at a profit, that's good news for would-be datacasters.

Those with modestly good memories will recall that iHug attempted to get into a form of datacasting through their terrestrial Starnet/Ultra service a few years ago. Their goal was to use their wireless internet service to also carry TV programming. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to have been very successful.

But what if we forget about real-time broadcasting and focus on Net-quality material or overnight downloads of better quality stuff. I'm talking about video streams that run at 200Kbps-400Kbps -- or maybe entire VHS-quality MPEG files that can be downloaded overnight then played the next day.

I wonder how long before someone realises that this is actually a viable way of delivering Net-quality or VHS-quality video, or even popular music tracks/albums to the home using the rapidly growing networks of wireless internet services around the country.

With suitable content-partners, could this be a rather efficient way for the likes of Whoosh to realise a return on off-peak under-utilised local wireless bandwidth?

The "top 10" music albums and "just gone to video" movies could be datacast out around the clock. Customers wanting to buy any of this content would log into the content-provider's website, pay their money and receive a code that would then allow them to decrypt a particular part of the stream. Then, overnight, that file could be downloaded, decrypted and burnt to a CD or DVD for use on a regular CD or DVD player (albeit at lower than DVD resolution).

Simple, efficient and a great way for the content producer and wireless service operator to generate new revenues.

Don't hold your breath though -- the big hiccup will be the content providers. Both the recording and movie studios (as we all know) seem very reluctant to move away from strong DRM systems and that would mandate that such content be viewed or played on a PC -- and nobody wants to watch Return of The King on a 17" monitor.

However, broadcasters such as budding amateur movie directors and Maori TV could use such a system to distribute their content to those outlying areas which are now well covered by wireless and, once the delivery mechanism appears, I'm pretty sure there'd be many other local content providers who'd leap at the chance to use it.

Even the nation's newspapers could deliver full electronic versions of their dailies (complete with all those display ads online readers never usually get to see) using datacasting.

I wonder if the wireless vendors will exploit this massive benefit that wireless offers over DSL?

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