!PORTAL POWER!

Broadband portals will be leagues away from traditional narrowband portals.

Functional, clean and fast sites with intuitive navigation are needed for the broadband era.

One of the most exciting aspects of broadband will be video streaming. Users will be able to watch video without the wait or grief.

Broadband will revolutionise navigation. Surfing will be like moving from room to room, as opposed to page to page!

Broadband will make the surfing faster, but you have to make this clear so that users see the benefit.

When creating the broadband portal, AOL Europe have to keep five things in mind:

- SPEED
- USERS WILL BE 'NET SAVVY'
- ADSL IS ALWAYS TURNED ON
- FIXED COST OF THE LINE
- DEPTH OF CONTENT

Freeserve have made deals with partners who supply attractive annimation and video. AOL Europe can better this with existing partners and TIME WARNER content.

BTOpenWorld like Freeserve Plus have opted for the channeling approach - dividing content according to its subject. This ensures that users are not overwhelmed.

The front page of Chello & Excite also instantly show the user how different they are to narrowband portals. ITN World News have a Real Video stream on theirn front page. Deeper down there are more tha 80 video feeds available on Chello, which shows how broadband could evolve to be a rival to Digital TV.

In my view, legal file sharing (along napster lines) will be the killer application of the Broadband portal. This should be one of AOL Europe's ambitions!