Revenue earned by consumer broadband value-added services (BVAS) more than doubled during 2004 -- At the beginning of the year it was running at an annual rate of about $3.3 billion worldwide. By the end of the year the figure was $6.9 billion. This is the first time it has been possible to estimate the growth of this new market, using the data provided by the second edition of Point Topic's report on The Consumer BVAS Market. The BVAS market is vitally important for service providers who need to find ways of increasing the revenue they receive from broadband services. The 2004 results are good news for them from this point of view. Most value-added services delivered over broadband increased in both users and total revenues. Services such as video over broadband, music and voice over IP (VoIP) all grew strongly. The increase in the run-rate of revenues was much steeper than the growth in the number of consumer broadband lines, which grew about 45 percent to 131 million, or in consumer broadband access revenues, which grew by about 22 percent to $39 billion. Price cuts by both DSL and cable operators resulted in revenues growing more slowly than the number of lines.
Ultra-Wideband (UWB) is quietly becoming one of the most strategic short-range wireless technologies in the market, moving from niche deployments into the mainstream of smartphones, cars, and smart spaces. As the ecosystem matures and next-generation implementations arrive, UWB is shifting from nice-to-have to a foundational capability for secure access, sensing, and high-performance device-to-device connectivity. UWB Technology Market Development Unlike Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, or legacy IEEE 802.15.4 implementations, UWB combines three powerful attributes in a single radio: secure ranging, radar-like sensing, and low-latency, high-throughput short-range data. This allows networking and IT vendors to architect experiences that blend precise location, context awareness, and rich interaction in ways traditional connectivity stacks cannot easily match. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, UWB is expected to be one of the fastest-growing wireless connectivity...