Mumbai: In a couple of years, dial-up Internet will become pass. High-speed Internet connection through optic-fibre cable would have changed the very lifestyle of people.

A digitised lifestyle, made possible by the optic-fibre pipelines that carry huge digital data across the globe in a fraction of a second, would mean dramatic changes in the way people communicate with each other - in their working environment and even in the manner they carry out their daily chores at home.

With the broadband cable connection at home and offices, people would start controlling from anywhere in the world with their personal computers, electronic gadgets such as TV, game consoles, and for that matter anything that is wired.

The broadband revolution will have a profound impact on businesses and consumers. It will offer immense opportunity for some companies, while for some others it will pose a great challenge.

Scores of telecom companies are currently engaged in laying optic-fibre cables across nations, continents and under the seas with the dream of connecting all personal computers to broadband applications and content.

Broadband will move beyond the PC and the Web and be used for communications, entertainment, security and control. It will provide access to jukeboxes of music, movies, TV and games delivered to digital audio and video players anywhere in the house, point out Sandy Teger and Dave Waks, editors of Broadband Home, an online magazine that monitors developments in the broadband sector.

Broadband Home organised a three-day conference in San Jose, California, last month where participants from 12 countries representing 80 companies spanning all sectors of the information technology industry value-chain discussed the prospects and challenges of broadband technology.

Broadband technology and network will support personal voice and video conferencing, and make it possible to share photos and videos with friends and family, and to control VCRs, lights from anywhere. Much of this is starting to happen today and was made tangible in the demonstrations by speakers at the conference.

To realise the full potential of new applications and services, Internet service providers in Stockholm and Milan are already using fiber to deliver IP over Ethernet at 100 Mbps both ways, for uploading and downloading.

It was pointed out at the conference that over the next decade, physical delivery of newspapers and CDs will largely give way to electronic delivery, and analog formats, which still dominate the telephone and television services, will give way to digital formats. Industries as diverse as telephone companies, movie studios, newspaper publishers and builders will be impacted by this transition.

Internet service providers underlined the need to evolve a technology that enables broadband cable networks to carry multiple TV channels. Speakers described a variety of wired and wireless technologies to achieve this goal.

Though personal computers and Internet applications have been the main driving force pulling broadband into the home and will continue to drive the growth of home networking, many new broadband devices and applications are entering the market to move beyond Web-browsing and email.

Mike Toutonghi, head of Microsofts consumer-focused eHome division, described the opportunities for infrastructure, devices, and services in three areas: Entertainment, communications, and convenience / control. He said the challenge is in bringing together the worlds of consumer electronics and the PC to create exciting new products and technologies for digital audio, digital video, digital photography and video on demand.

Soon after the conference, the eHome division announced an agreement with Koreas Samsung Electronics to collaborate on consumer PCs and consumer electronics products for the digital home.

In the session on Sharing your audio and video, Luminati and Sonicblue talked about the newly-released home media servers, which store many hours of digital audio and video for listening and viewing throughout the home.

John Canning of Microsoft introduced the session by saying that these products are addressed to meeting real customer needs. He said archiving videos, music and photos appeal to the end customer. Following the conference, both Sonicblue and Luminati participated in the Windows XP launch.

Bob Selzler of InnoMedia talked about InnoMedia's BuddyTalk product for converged communications using the PC and ordinary telephones. Sung Park of Soundpipe discussed a new Internet-enabled telephone answering device that uses Internet email to deliver telephone messages anywhere in the world.

In the session on interactive games, Britt Morris of Sega.com said Sega intends to support broadband on many different platforms including gaming consoles, PCs and handheld devices.