Next year a large slice of the British public is going to experience the next generation of the internet, courtesy of NTL Broadband. The speed of the new connections - 20 megabits per second (20Mbps) - is enough to stream high-definition TV (HDTV) straight from the net to a PC or television, without even having to download.

Last week NTL Broadband demonstrated 'streaming' high-definition TV over the new 20Mbps service. The BBC Proms came out crystal-clear in the not-so new HDTV format, which offers pictures four times sharper than ordinary digital TV. You could pick out expressions on the faces of people far back in the audience.

Even better, the new connection was able to manage this without sturrering or lagging.
Search giants like Google are already predicting that 'video search' is going to be the next big thing.

And with the race on to bring ever faster net connections to home users - people in Hong Kong can already get 100Mbps connections; in Hamburg and Stuttgart they can get 50Mbps - it looks certain that within two or three years, much of Britain's TV is going to be coming to us over the net.

The nightly TV schedule could be a thing of the past. With new fast connections, it could be possible to simply search for TV and films that you like, Google-style, and start watching what you want immediately.
On the Business web site there is even an article suggesting NTL may go straight to a 100Mbps service.

"Fibre can carry up to one gigabit," Keith Monserrat, NTL's director of policy said. "It will be relatively straightforward for NTL to provide speeds of at least 100 megabytes per second across its entire network. By contrast, BT's planned 21st Century network will not be able to deliver speeds above 10 megabytes."

Although NTL will not reveal the timing of the launch of its 100-megabyte service, Monserrat said NTL customers could expect to be offered the service "in the not too distant future".

NTL hopes to establish a market lead over other UK telecoms operators. Other UK internet service providers (ISPs) dispute the need for broadband services much faster than eight megabytes. But according to NTL, ISPs are rolling out 28 megabyte services in France and 20 megabytes services in The Netherlands.