One Billion People Online!

Got 'NET?! Research indicates that is the case for an estimated one billion people (or 'users' to the usability world) as of late '05. Fast forward to present day, that number has, no doubt, increased even further.

This is truly remarkable and awesome in itself; notwithstanding, the tremendous impact on usability concerns. For instance, wired and wireless bandwidth are both on the rise. Broadband access has and is expected to grow in the double digits in years to come. Wireless access by way of WiMAX, the higher bandwidth and greater range alternative to WiFi is, too, expected to be a reality in '06 and '07. The bottom line is that there are more people online with faster access.

Does this mean performance latency is a thing of the past? Can we put larger files online? Can our web pages weigh as much as we want? Are pure-play flash sites going to make a return? Can we embed as much rich media as we want onto web pages? Can we load up on high-resolution images...especially for wap sites? Probably not, given the optimal page download time based on users' bandwidth capabilities remains constant, it would only mean that more users fall into the faster category. Bulking up our sites would only serve to slow them down and further isolate the lower bandwidth users. Until we've seen the last of dial-up, sites still need to be accessible and usable to those users. But what it does mean is that more sites will be accessed via wap-enabled devices and created specifically for such devices given the greater bandwidth affordances.

Read the article at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003975.