or a broadband connection. What's needed is an ultralow-cost network and ultralow-cost access to and from that network. 3 http://www.economist.com/node/2281736?story_id=2281736 4 A popular US TV cartoon programme. 5 A popular Australian soap. Making Telecoms Work 21.18 Defining an Ultralow-Cost Network 21.18.1 Ultralow-Cost Storage Storage costs are halving each year, a function of solid-state, hard-disk and optical-memory cost reduction and improvements in content compression methodologies. The low error rates intrinsic to nonvolatile storage media suggest further improvements in compression techniques are possible, provided related standards issues can be addressed. A closer harmonisation of next-generation video- and audio-compression techniques would, for example, be advantageous. Other techniques such as load balancing across multiple storage and server resources promise additional scale and cost efficiencies. 21.18.2 Ultralow-Cost Access This is dependent on the relative cost economics of fibre, copper and wireless access. All three of these delivery/access media options have enjoyed incremental but rapid improvements in throughput capability. Throughput rate increases have been achieved through a mix of frequency-multiplexing and time-multiplexing techniques. Fibre and copper are both inherently stable and consistent in terms of their data rates and error rates. Error rates in wireless are intrinsically higher and more variable as a consequence of the effects of fast and slow fading. These effects are particularly pronounced in wide- area mobile wireless systems but are still present in fixed wireless systems particularly when implemented at frequencies above 3 GHz. Higher error rates and uneven error rate distribution make it harder to realise the full benefits of higher-order content-compression techniques. Wide-area wireless mobility also implies a significant signalling overhead that adds directly to the overall cost of delivery. All three access options (fibre, copper and wireless), have a related rea