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Broadband Proliferation

Broadband access technology of whatever type (DSL, WiMAX, Satellite etc) is a key enabler technology for home healthcare monitoring, particularly if personal health records are to be employed. Many of the product offerings currently available for home use will work with the old fashioned modem dial-up (56kB) technology in a store-and-forward capacity, however this technology is not ideal for regular data forwarding or exchange of large files (such as may be required with an personal health record). Also to ensure privacy and security, the data packets may contain a lot of overhead and thus small packages may become very large (and slow and unreliable to transmit). Therefore access to a broadband technology is important for telehealthcare. When broadband is discussed, three areas are of primary concern, these are;

• Coverage - According to the OECD "Since December 2004, broadband subscribers in the OECD have increased by 187%, reaching 221 million in June 2007 and 380 million in September 2008. Broadband is available to the majority of inhabitants even within the largest OECD countries. A number of countries have reached 100% coverage with at least one wired broadband technology and up to 60% with coverage by two".
• Speed - At the end of 2004 the average DSL speed across the OECD was less than 2 Mbit/s. The average speed of advertised connections increased from 2 Mbit/s in 2004 to almost 9 Mbit/s in 2007. However the actual speed delivered to the customer can vary greatly form the 'advertised' speed and this has been an issue of some contention and has led to a lack of trust by consumers.
• Cost – Cost of a broadband service will be a key factor in the uptake of home health monitoring technologies. Broadband is viewed as an enabler technology for home healthcare and bearing in mind that the major cost items will be the hardware devices, software, monitoring etc, it is critical that broadband pricing remains very low. According to a recent OECD report between 2005 and 2006 the average price for a DSL connection fell by 19% and by 16% for cable Internet connections. Broadband is also affordable in most OECD countries. The price of a broadband subscription in 20 of the 30 OECD countries was less than 2% of monthly GDP per capita in October 2007.

A detailed treatment of Broadband types, proliferation, cost, speed and policy is given in the Connectivity CAPSIL

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