Internet service market & its position in ICT Исполнитель

Internet service market & its position in ICT

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.

Most traditional communications media including telephone, music, film, and television are reshaped or redefined by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and IPTV. Newspaper, book and other print publishing are adapting to Web site technology, or are reshaped into blogging and web feeds. The Internet has enabled or accelerated new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Online shopping has boomed both for major retail outlets and small artisans and traders. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.

Before understanding internet service market it’s worth familiarizing with the history of the internet. So, initially, the USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA or DARPA) in February 1958 to regain a technological lead. ARPA created the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) to further the research of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program, which had networked country-wide radar systems together for the first time. The IPTO's purpose was to find ways to address the US military's concern about survivability of their communications networks, and as a first step interconnect their computers at the Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain, and Strategic Air Command headquarters (SAC).

Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost two decades, the network did not gain a public face until the 1990s. On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan-European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW, patterned after HyperCard and built using the X Window System. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic, technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word Internet had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its use as a synecdoche in reference to the World Wide Web.

Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks, such as FidoNet, have remained separate). During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%. This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network. The estimated population of Internet users is 1.97 billion as of 30 June 2010.

From 2009 onward, the Internet is expected to grow significantly in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Indonesia (BRICI countries). These countries have large populations and moderate to high economic growth, but still low Internet penetration rates. In 2009, the BRICI countries represented about 45 percent of the world's population and had approximately 610 million Internet users, but by 2015, Internet users in BRICI countries will double to 1.2 billion, and will triple in Indonesia.

Routers allow users to connect to the Internet from anywhere there is a wireless network supporting that device's technology. Within the limitations imposed by small screens and other limited facilities of such pocket-sized devices, services of the Internet, including email and the web, may be available. Service providers may restrict the services offered and wireless data transmission charges may be significantly higher than other access methods.

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has made collaborative work dramatically easier, with the help of collaborative software. Not only can a group cheaply communicate and share ideas, but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups to easily form in the first place. An example of this is the free software movement, which has produced, among other programs, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice.org. Internet "chat", whether in the form of IRC chat rooms or channels, or via instant messaging systems, allow colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way when working at their computers during the day. Messages can be exchanged even more quickly and conveniently than via email. Extensions to these systems may allow files to be exchanged, "whiteboard" drawings to be shared or voice and video contact between team members.

Version control systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents without either accidentally overwriting each other's work or having members wait until they get "sent" documents to be able to make their contributions. Business and project teams can share calendars as well as documents and other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research, software development, conference planning, political activism and creative writing. Social and political collaboration is also becoming more widespread as both Internet access and computer literacy grow. From the flash mob 'events' of the early 2000s to the use of social networking in the 2009 Iranian election protests, the Internet allows people to work together more effectively and in many more ways than was possible without it.

The Internet allows computer users to remotely access other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. They may do this with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements. This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working bookkeepers, in other remote locations, based on information emailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker away from their desk, perhaps on the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can open a remote desktop session into his normal office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection via the Internet. This gives the worker complete access to all of his or her normal files and data, including email and other applications, while away from the office. This concept has been referred to among system administrators as the Virtual Private Nightmare, because it extends the secure perimeter of a corporate network into its employees' homes.

Internet provides us with three main types of services: information, communication and data transfer.

Information.Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web, or just the Web, interchangeably, but the two terms are not synonymous. The World Wide Web is a global set of documents, images and other resources, logically interrelated by hyperlinks and referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). URIs allow providers to symbolically identify services and clients to locate and address web servers, file servers, and other databases that store documents and provide resources and access them using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the primary carrier protocol of the Web. HTTP is only one of the hundreds of communication protocols used on the Internet. Web services may also use HTTP to allow software systems to communicate in order to share and exchange business logic and data.

World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari, and Google Chrome, let users navigate from one web page to another via hyperlinks embedded in the documents. These documents may also contain any combination of computer data, including graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content including games, office applications and scientific demonstrations. Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Yahoo! and Google, users worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to printed encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled the decentralization of information.

Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce or the sale of products and services directly via the Web continues to grow.

Communication.Electronic mail, or email, is an important communications service available on the Internet. The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. Pictures, documents and other files are sent as email attachments. Emails can be cc-ed to multiple email addresses.

Internet telephony is another common communications service made possible by the creation of the Internet. VoIP stands for Voice-over-Internet Protocol, referring to the protocol that underlies all Internet communication. The idea began in the early 1990s with walkie-talkie-like voice applications for personal computers. In recent years many VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the Internet carries the voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a traditional telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on Internet connections such as cable or ADSL. VoIP is maturing into a competitive alternative to traditional telephone service. Interoperability between different providers has improved and the ability to call or receive a call from a traditional telephone is available. Simple, inexpensive VoIP network adapters are available that eliminate the need for a personal computer.

Data transfer. File sharing is an example of transferring large amounts of data across the Internet. A computer file can be emailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a website or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication, the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption, and money may change hands for access to the file. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed—usually fully encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or other message digests. These simple features of the Internet, over a worldwide basis, are changing the production, sale, and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of print publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products.

Webcams are a low-cost extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full-frame-rate video, the picture is usually either small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal, traffic at a local roundabout or monitor their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat rooms and video conferencing are also popular with many uses being found for personal webcams, with and without two-way sound. YouTube was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading website for free streaming video with a vast number of users. It uses a flash-based web player to stream and show video files. Registered users may upload an unlimited amount of video and build their own personal profile. YouTube claims that its users watch hundreds of millions, and upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily.

Common methods of Internet access in homes include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or copper wires), and Wi-Fi, satellite and 3G/4G technology cell phones. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi cafes, where would-be users need to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. A whole campus or park, or even an entire city can be enabled. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial Wi-Fi services covering large city areas are in place in London, Vienna, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The Internet can then be accessed from such places as a park bench. Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular phone networks, and fixed wireless services. High-end mobile phones such as smart phones generally come with Internet access through the phone network. Web browsers such as Opera are available on these advanced handsets, which can also run a wide variety of other Internet software. More mobile phones have Internet access than PCs, though this is not as widely used. An Internet access provider and protocol matrix differentiates the methods used to get online.

Broadband is the common term for a very fast connection to the internet. It allows users to download online entertainment such as video clips and music, listen to digital radio, send e-mail faster and speeds up everything they do online.

A broadband service can transmit information at up to 40 times the speed of a dial-up modem connection. As the connection is always on, like water or electricity, users don't need to dial up every time they want to log on.

Broadband ADSL also lets people surf the internet and use the telephone at the same time.

Broadband is revolutionizing online activities everywhere for businesses, entertainment and public services. Faster speeds of up to 160 times a dial-up connection will bring about new services, including internet-TV and video on demand, across home, business and public life.

For the majority of those looking to upgrade to broadband Internet for the business or home, it's all about the extra speed.

Generally, the term broadband refers to a high-speed Internet transmission (usually 256Kbps and above) featuring a permanent connection. Now coming in a range of high-speed connection plans across a variety of access services, broadband promises to knock the socks off its analog dial-up predecessor for downloading multimedia content images and graphics, videos, networking games, and music streaming.

There are three ways of getting online with broadband - via your TV cable box, your satellite or via your phone line. If you've got cable TV, this is an easy option, but the most common type of broadband access is an upgraded home telephone line called ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line). ADSL is always connected so needn't be dialed up each time, and you can make phone calls on the same line while it's being used. This entails two costs - a special broadband modem, and an upgrade for your phone line. It's easy to avoid paying for these, however - broadband telephone companies are desperate to sign up customers, so all-inclusive bundles where the start-up costs are paid are common.

More than just the practical benefits of a faster connection, broadband can also change the way you approach using the Internet. With a dial-up connection you may consider it a nuisance to log on frequently to look up small items online — for example, using the Yellow Pages to find a phone number. If, instead, you have an always-on, fast connection, these tasks can be completed quickly, with little fuss. This may seem a trivial example, but it demonstrates a change to a more casual approach to Internet usage.

Given that broadband services are often touted as being more expensive — there's also the issue of price. In short, broadband is more costly than dial-up.

However, with so many packages out there today many broadband packages are quite comparable to dial-up services. If you are a frequent dial-up user, this equates too many phone calls during a month. Once you factor in the cost of local calls every time you dial-up, plus the cost of your monthly plan, your 56Kbps account may not seem that cheap after all. If you've opted for a dedicated second phone line, you will also be paying additional line rental fees. Compare this to the $50-70 ADSL plans now available and you can start to see the economic potential of broadband services to their dial-up counterparts.

With an ADSL or cable modem connection, for example, you can surf the Web without tying up your phone line — plus, the connection can potentially be shared amongst other PCs in your home. ADSL, cable modem, satellite and wireless services do generally cost more to set up, but as you will see from this buying guide, there are a variety of ways to reduce the costs of installing the service as well.

HFC (hybrid fiber-coaxial) networks that are used to carry cable TV pictures are also capable of carrying data at very high rates. The current cable TV signal doesn't take up all of the available bandwidth, because these cable networks were designed to carry a digital TV signal, rather than the current analog signal — and this spare bandwidth can also be used to carry Internet data.

Cable companies have tricks to get around this. One of the cable operators’ tricks is to scale its network (where more connection points are added) to suit the number of customers in a particular area of the network. Adding more connection points means they are able to rebalance the network so that customers in all areas of the network are receiving equal performance levels. Scaling the network is also known as "Node Grooming" and the cable companies say they carry out node grooms regularly.

Once the cable is installed, you'll need a cable modem to get connected. This connects at one end to the cable, and at the other end to your PC, either through an Ethernet or a USB connection. Cable modems can transfer data at theoretical speeds of up to 3Mbps. However, because cable is a shared medium with many other users on the same line, performance varies with the amount of subscribers using that particular stretch of bandwidth, as well as the usage patterns.

Cable download speeds are very fast, but, as usual, this can depend a great deal on the source from which the files are being downloaded. Ping times are also very fast, which is a boon for online games. However, as with the rest of the Internet, performance varies depending on the time of day and several other factors, such as the number of subscribers on the specific bandwidth strand.

Satellite is often touted as an alternative to fixed-line access such as cable or ADSL, but it does have limitations and is yet to offer the same sort of data speeds. Despite that, satellite has succeeded in providing much faster and often more reliable Internet service, particularly in rural and regional areas, than the standard public system telephone network.

There are two types of satellite services you can use: asynchronous and synchronous. Similar to the asymmetrical DSL service, asynchronous means that there are different speeds for upstream and downstream traffic (again, downstream is faster than upstream).Synchronous satellite services on the other hand, have the same speed for upstream as for downstream, which makes it more suitable to services that are heavily impacted by delays, like video and audio streaming.

Generally these satellite technologies work on one of two principles:

- Data is downloaded from the satellite to a terrestrial base station and from the base station to the consumer by microwave link. The consumer requires a receiving dish or antenna and a standard phone modem for uploading data to the base station and from there to the satellite.

- Data is downloaded directly to the consumer's satellite dish but a phone modem is still required to upload data to a terrestrial base station and to the satellite.

Wireless broadband services are centeredaround the IEEE 802.11 standard.There are currently four specifications in the family: 802.11, 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g.

The most widely deployed of these today is 802.11b (often called Wi-Fi), which runs on the public 2.4GHz spectrum and is capable of data speeds of up to 11Mbps over a range of up to 150m.

Growth of the Internet market is driven by innovation in the ICT sector. ICT firmscontinue to play a dominant role in the top group of R&D-performing firms, a role thathas not diminished despite revenue and employment declines during the recession. The most dynamic growth comes from Internet firms andincreasingly Asian firms, and semiconductor R&D underpins development of newapplications.

The outlook is also positive for uptake of ICTs and the Internet. In most OECDcountries at least three-quarters of businesses are connected to high-speedbroadband, and over 50% of OECD households have high-speed broadbandconnections. These trends also stimulate the development and use of digital content.Most areas are growing at double-digit rates. In sectors such as games, music, film,news and advertising, the Internet economy is transforming existing value chainsand business models and will continue doing so.