2004 Prediction Collection
A collection of noteworthy predictions for the coming year

What is going to happen in the year 2004? Here is a collection of various writer predictions of what could be. We feel you will find this collection both entertaining and informative. Have a prediction that you would like added to our list? Please write us and if we like it, we'll add it.

Birds-Eye's Predictions - short but sweet!

Predictions by Companies:

Predictions by Individuals:

Bradford, Stacey
Dulaney, Ken - Gartner Inc.
Israel, Shel
Kiernan, James - FCBi
Laws, Kevin - PacRim Venture Partners
Nelson, Thomas
Parr, Berry - MediaSavvy
Zawodny, Jeremy

Posted Predictions (anonymous):

justin
shorebreak

Guest Predictions:

By Minturn Osborne (12/17/2003):

1) Provisioning Companies Go Away

    Get Absorbed in the edge by the Client Side Software Co's (eg http://www.finepoint.com or absorbed in the head end by the billing companies (CSG, Convergys, Innovis DST, or Portal (Yeah, Portal)). 

2) Training Expenditure Triples

    New Services=New Issues for development, deployment, and support 

3) VOIP hits 1% penetration (688,000 subscribers) Not Switched and VOIP, just VOIP 

4) Cable Systems swap as as clustering becomes SOP with Cox picking up Adelphia LA 

5) Insight gets sold. 

By SB <Anonymous> (12/17/2003):

I don’t see a lot of change in the next twelve months. Completive pressure especially from DSL and DBS services will continue to whittle away at the Broadband’s core service which hopefully will improve pricing for the consumer. As for data, wired broadband will be in a position to either drop prices or increase performance (read speed) or both. I believe Comcast has announced that they will offer the latter in March of 04 to all of its data subscribers. If their networks overall capacity isn’t significantly beefed up prior to this roll out the congestion and packet loss will negatively impact perceptions as well as stifle marketing projections. I believe there remains a huge untapped business opportunity for high speed data services which should help justify further network enhancements but I am not seeing much of a push here. But here again the cart needs to placed after the horse.  

Beyond this year most of the wired broadband carriers are just beginning to demonstrate their ability to provide a high reliable high quality services at competitive prices and if they stay their course should  continue to rule the roost and remain in the game at least for another ten to fifteen years. However, better technology  looms around the corner and will give conventional broadband a run for its life. I believe the chief competition will come from various Wireless/Cellular/WIFI services that will provide comparable bandwidth from hubs that serve far larger serving areas. These wireless broadband providers will provide anyone on the fly subscription to voice, video and data services to PDA/laptop and automobile terminals with eventual coast to coast coverage. In order to compete with an advantage the conventional CATV broadband providers will need to reclaim most of their bandwidth currently used for the inefficient one-way distribution of analog and digital video services. With the exception of News and Special events most programming today is pre-recorded material which can easily be downloaded from various entertainment servers worldwide for convenient pay per use/view consumption. As the WIFI services improve their coverage area and continuity of service the wired broadband could loose most if not all their market share.

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