OnLive puts the processing power to render and play games on their end, and streams the result to you over your broadband connection (click to enlarge)

OnLive, the cloud-based videogame streaming service, was on display during a live dem0 of the service at Columbia University.  The service, which literally streams game play across fast broadband networks, could seriously challenge the videogame console marketplace.  Instead of using an expensive piece of hardware at home to play videogames such as w88, OnLive puts the hardware at their end and streams the results to any computer or television.  If it works, it means consumers won’t need the highest performance videocards or latest new CPU.  They’ll just need a fast broadband connection to let OnLive’s own servers do all of the processing.

The founder and CEO of OnLive, Steve Perlman, shows considerable enthusiasm for the concept, and several major investors including AT&T and Time Warner have backed the venture, which could help guarantee smooth passage on their broadband networks.

Still, a product that requires a minimum of a 5Mbps broadband connection for HD-quality streamed game play could consume an enormous amount of data — up to 2.25 GB per hour of gaming.  Although cable and fiber-based broadband connections will suffice, many DSL customers don’t have service fast enough to support OnLive.  Among those that do, any usage caps or allowances will significantly reduce the value of the service to potential subscribers.  Frontier Communications’ infamous 5GB “acceptable use” per month, for instance, would allow just over two hours of use per month, assuming you did nothing else with your DSL service.

Even Comcast’s 250GB usage allowance cuts game play to a little over 100 hours per month.  That’s a ludicrous amount of gaming for most of us, but not for some gaming addicts who may have tried games like 핑카지노.  Besides, it also assumes you don’t use your Comcast broadband service to watch video or other bandwidth-intensive online services.

Time Warner Cable’s proposed 40GB usage limit, shelved indefinitely in April after consumer protests, would permit less than an hour of play per day, assuming your Road Runner service was for nothing but OnLive.

In short, assuming OnLive works as promoted, its biggest threat to success will come from external factors mostly outside of its control — namely cap-happy ISPs that could quickly make streamed cloud computing untenable for all but the wealthiest among us.

What could OnLive do to reduce its risk from caps?  Partner with ISPs in a non-Net Neutral broadband world, of course.  That investment from AT&T, for example, could theoretically pave the way for AT&T to exempt OnLive from any usage limits that come from its own Internet Overcharging experiments in Beaumont, Texas and Reno, Nevada.  That would be a clear violation of Net Neutrality, if enacted into law.

Scenarios like this should drive consumers to support Net Neutrality policies.  ISPs forming “preferred partnerships” with innovative services like OnLive might seem consumer-friendly at first, but not in the long-term because it spells the death of would-be “non-preferred” start-ups, and helps pave the way even faster to Internet Overcharging schemes letting broadband providers pick the winners and losers of the future.

[flv width=”484″ height=”292″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/OnLive Columbia University Demo.flv[/flv]

OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman demonstrates OnLive and talks about cloud-based, streaming game play at this gathering at Columbia University in New York. (49 minutes)
(If stream stops for buffering, pause it for a few minutes to let a significant amount of the file pre-load, which should reduce re-buffering problems.)

New Zealand, along with Australia and Canada are often cited by broadband providers as examples of places where broadband usage limits are commonplace.  With dreams of Internet Overcharging schemes in their heads, Time Warner Cable, among several others, have routinely pointed to Internet service abroad to justify limiting your usage at home.

But providers always ignore the fact customers despise the limitations on their service, in several cases ranking it among the biggest problems they have with their Internet Service Provider.  Internet rationing plans that barely budge in broadband allowances are a major factor in broadband mediocrity, and government officials are increasingly taking notice.  In some countries, national broadband policies seek to expand infrastructure where private providers won’t.

In New Zealand, the push for better connectivity comes through expansion of the undersea fiber cables that connect the country with the rest of the online world.  In the south Pacific, it is that connectivity problem which directly impacts consumer pricing of broadband and bring limits on service.

Today, the only major connection New Zealand has with the world is through Southern Cross Cable Networks, which have cables stretching from Auckland in New Zealand to Sydney, Australia and between Auckland and Hawaii.

Now, a second company hopes to dramatically expand connectivity with an expanded capacity cable to be laid between Auckland and Sydney.  Kordia, a state-owned enterprise, which plans to run the 2,350km cable, says this expansion will dramatically lower broadband pricing for New Zealand and allow providers to vastly expand or discontinue broadband usage caps.

Kordia says the cable, costing between $112-149 million dollars US, will be operational by the end of 2011 if all goes according to plan.

“Our proposed cable will take the most direct, quickest and least expensive route for New Zealand customers.  OptiKor is a better proposition for New Zealand than any other cable project – we are the most direct route to Australia and through our partners, we can deliver New Zealand traffic all the way to the United States,” Kordia Chairman David Clarke says.

Prices are already dropping in New Zealand just from the threat of competition.  Southern Cross Cable slashed prices on its cable 75 percent in anticipation of Kordia’s future competition.  Kordia claims that price cutting is designed to help drag down the company’s efforts to obtain contracts with telecommunications companies in advance of construction.

Still, should the cable be laid, in addition to the prospect of ending aggravating usage caps, Kordia estimates New Zealanders will save almost $1.5 billion US on Internet access between now and 2020.