NanoFibre will initially offer telephone and internet services with television following shortly thereafter. These three popular telecommunications services may be the most commonly considered applications of broadband, they by no means represent the potential of the network. As the network matures, additional service providers will begin developing and marketing complementary and supplementary services, like these:
Remote, real-time monitoring of vital signs; interactive virtual "office visits" within the home; surgeries performed in local hospitals by physicians half a world away; instantaneous data transmission to labs and off-site experts; interactive consulting with physicians in other locations—the possibilities are legion. The tremendous speeds and capacities that fibre affords will radically improve the way we provide healthcare both in local clinics as well as within the comfort of our own homes.
True full-frame, smooth video will make frequent on-site visits less necessary for businesses. No longer constrained to postage-stamp sized images on a computer screen with choppy motion, businesses can invite participants to virtually attend meetings from any location, and NanoFibre bandwidth will support wall-sized images with surround sound audio. Conference participants of large seminars can pay an enrollment fee and save travel and lodging expenses and can still participate, real-time, in a simulated conference/seminar experience. Instantaneous client interactions from your desktop computer with full-screen video and audio connections will improve every day business.
Students in remote locations can sit in a "virtual classroom" and interact with the class in another area; guest lecturers in distant institutions can present multimedia presentations locally; parents can use full-motion video and audio to conduct virtual parent/teacher conferences over the internet; full-time employees with challenging schedules can enroll in education programs that deliver customized educational content fitting their schedules. The elimination of boundaries of time and space will revolutionize education and provide educators with the tools they have dreamed of for so long.
Challenges traditionally associated with the daily drive to work such as the cost of fuel, traffic, potential accidents, greenhouse gases; wear-and-tear on vehicles, wasted commute time, etc.—as well as overhead expenses for furnishing offices with employee work space, can be reduced or eliminated through work-at-home options. However, employees must be just as productive—if not more—at home as they would be in the office, so work-at-home options must provide error-free and quick access to servers, email, and other centrally located facilities and services. Fiber connections between employees and businesses will increase the viability of work-at-home options and can increase efficiency, profitability as well as employee satisfaction.
Using broadband connections, home owners and property managers will be able to see (through video cameras) their properties over the internet. Parents could check on the babysitter or on the kids' party when they are out. Equipment and appliances in the home can be turned on and off remotely. Repair professionals could run diagnostics on appliances before making a service call. In the event of a security breach, your house could send warnings to you wherever you may be. Peace of mind about the security of your home is just one of the many services the NanoFibre network is capable of supporting.
Game players will be able to connect with others around the world to play sophisticated, graphics-intensive, highly interactive games over their broadband connections. Though a limited version of this service is now available over current DSL and cable modems, it pales in comparison to the types of games a fibre network can facilitate. More realistic environments and graphics, real-time responses, collaborative strategizing and execution are all part of what the future of game playing can offer over a fibre network. Furthermore, this same technology could be used to facilitate corporate training involving role playing; electronic simulator training and more.
Most of us have lost valuable data at some point and business information such as accounting data or personal pictures are difficult or impossible to recreate. Off-site storage services will be able to send gigabytes of data on the NanoFibre network. Any business owner can send backups of all daily transactions to off-site facilities. Restoring data after data loss is simple and very fast over a fibre optic network.
This list represents technology that can now be made available to residents of the Columbia Valley who connect to NanoFibre. Even more exciting are all the possibilities the future holds—products and services not even envisioned today. With the ability to scale, the NanoFibre network anticipates hosting all these and many more innovative technologies and services.