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Just this week, the BBC announced that it's to revamp its online presence so as to greatly increase the amount of interactivity and user-generated content - a trend that is being picked up by many media organisations.

Just take a look at the most successful websites around and you'll find that most of them have been built on a mass of user-generated content -- this is the future.

It's just not economically viable for a content producer to keep up with the demands of the market and still turn a profit, which means that you and I are now being factored into the whole equation by those wanting to spin a dime.

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Well we *would* be part of the equation if it weren't for Telecom being hell-bent on providing an obscenely unbalanced version of DSL.

Take a look at one of the hottest new properties on the Net: Google Video.

A huge amount of the best content on this site is user-created and user-donated.

Of course it's pretty easy to upload a 10-100MB video file if you've got *real* broadband, where upload speeds are 512Kbps or better. Here in NZ of course, we're hog-tied to 128Kbps so our ability to contribute is significantly reduced.

Even TVNZ and TV3 must be frustrated at the slow upload speeds associated with our DSL service. If you want to send them some "viewer-cam" footage for the 6pm bulletin then chances are that if you send it via DSL, it will no longer be news by the time the upload is finished.

Of course it's no secret that Telecom has its own agenda for becoming a player in the IP-broadcast market so maybe they're playing smart by deliberately disadvantaging all those other players through the provision of an ultra-unbalanced ADSL service.

It's looking increasingly as if the future of the Net is video and the future of popular websites is user-contributed material. Here in NZ the two simply won't work together under the current regime, and that's a big problem.

In fact, even the download of video material is compromised by the tiny caps offered on some Telecom DSL plans. Someone on Telecom's cheapest plan has just a 200MB cap. That's gone after watching just over two hours of streamed video (at 256Kbps) -- Google video won't be a frequent haunt for these folks.

However, some of our broadcasters still don't seem to get it anyway.

A week or two ago I wanted to drop TV3 a line and let them know about a possible news story. I went to their website, clicked on the contact button and then on the link that would supposedly allow me to submit a news tip...

Here's the page I got.

If you look closely, you'll see that you have to be "logged on" to submit a news tip.

Sorry TV3 -- if I'm submitting a news tip then I'm doing *you* a favour and I don't expect to jump through hoops to do it. Your loss! I won't be contacting you any time soon.

By comparison, TVNZ's approach seems far more sensible and they allow you to upload your tip or video footage without the need to go through a registration and log-in process. (By the way, click on the "terms and conditions" link by the "Upload" button on that page -- yeah, that's good eh? -- unless it's fixed by now)

If the mainstream media really want to increase the amount of user-contributed content so as to build their online presence then they've got to make it easy to do so and they've also got to apply pressure on Telecom to increase upload speeds so that it can be done in a sensible timeframe.

Will our second-world broadband system leave us out of the loop as online content shifts increasingly towards video and user-contributed material?

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