Strategic impact of broadband telecommunications in insurance, publishing, and health care

The business environment of the insurance, publishing, and health care industries is described, and key points to their operations where broadband telecommunications can play a role are identified. Broadband applications are analyzed as to whether they provide both an operational and strategic benefit to innovating organizations in each of the three industries. The following impacts of broadband are identified: fast, efficient, and differentiated service to customers, reduced costs, targeted marketing, and market expansion. The traffic characteristics of the applications in terms of bandwidth and business are analyzed and shown to map on to the rollout of North American public network services by first implementing the less bursty, lower bandwidth applications requiring the interconnections of a small number of sites, and later those involving more bursty, higher bandwidth traffic and more numerous sites