Broadband services for residential and commercial tenants: a categorisation of current and future services and a survey on tenants needs in Sweden

Abstract

The world is going through a rapid development of Internet and network-related technologies. The Swedish government's vision is, for example, that all private persons, firms and organisations have broadband in the speed of five megabit per second before 2005. Such developments mean that the market for the construction industry will expand. Most large and medium size contractors in Sweden work with drawing cables for broadband. Most companies in real estate offer or plan to offer broadband services to their tenants. The trend is that the technologies and the suppliers drive the development of broadband, not customers and the customers’ needs. In this paper a global scanning of current and future services, delivered by broadband, which can be used in computer networks of the type local community system (LCS) developed by NCC and Ericsson is presented. Twenty-eight types of services are identified and are categorised in five major groups; information services, communication services, entertainment services, e-commerce services and telemetry services. In collaboration with NCC customers’ needs on broadband services were investigated in a case study, Sundby Park. A questionnaire based on the types of services identified was sent to 144 residential tenants and 42 commercial tenants in the area. The study indicates that residential tenants are most interested in information services while commercial tenants are most interested in communication services. In total, the interest for broadband services is lower than expected. The reason could either be that the industries overestimate the tenants needs for broadband services or that the respondents do not have enough knowledge yet to fully understand the services.