August 27, 2002, atNewYork.com - 'True' Broadband Can Grow GDP: Gartner
"True" broadband infrastructure would help advanced countries such as the United States add as much as $500 billion to their Gross Domestic Product, according to Gartner Dataquest. The tech research firm reckons the impact of ubiquitous broadband in the U.S. could total as much as $500 billion worth of goods and services produced over a span of ten years. But it also said the estimate is based on what it calls "true" broadband, defined as 10 megabytes per-second data transmission speeds.

Read Economic Research Reports about the Potential of Broadband Internet Access & Content to Stimulate Global Economic Growth

Broadband, the term that describes high-speed transmission of data over fiber or broadband wireless Ethernet, is quickly becoming a prevalent connectivity technology that will have an immense impact on Web developers. Digital video, IP telephony, music and large images are all examples of data that will be enabled by high-bandwidth Internet connections. Aimed at computers and most likely the web-connected TV set-top boxes of the future, new broadband content will create a demand for web designers who can adapt traditional skills such as broadcast design, to fit this new incarnation of the Web and unleash the full potential of the Internet as a mass marketing medium - broadband interactivity will add a new dimension to Internet-TV (it is fast becoming one-in-the-same).

Whether you've been keeping your finger on the pulse of what's going on in the wonderful world of Flash or not, it's pretty evident that the number of devices that can run Macromedia Flash content is increasing at an amazing rate.

Let's go through the list real quick. Besides the 436 million folks out there that can play Flash now, the Macromedia Flash Player can run on millions, that's right –millions- of Pocket PC devices, some of which are Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. The Macromedia Flash player also runs on the Nokia 9200 communicator series, another phone. On the Interactive TV front: Web TV / Ultimate TV, Liberate, Moxi, MSTV, and OpenTV. You've even got a device called "the Pogo" which is basically a cell phone and mobile Flash player all in one. That's a pretty good selection of devices, but wait, there's more. As more industries adopt Plasma screens as part of their information display systems, many are using Macromedia Flash as a great way to display information—from the price of cheeseburgers to flight information. Companies are using Flash as a front end for ATM and financial systems.