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November 26, 2007, 04:16 PM ET
Back to Soup Cans and String?
The Web may be about to get a whole lot slower. The folks at Nemertes Research, a technology-research firm, certainly think so. They predict that demand for bandwidth will outpace capacity by 2010.
There’s no question that streaming video, file-sharing services, and other bandwidth hogs have placed serious demands on the Internet’s infrastructure. According to the Nemertes study, the increase in bandwidth use will dwarf current plans to bolster network capacity, unless cable and phone companies and wireless providers invest up to $55-billion in iimprovements.
USA Today notes that the Internet Innovation Alliance, a coalition of businesses and nonprofit groups that support tax and spending policies to encourage investing in Web capacity, has backed the study.
But therein lies the rub, according to Broadband Reports. Fears of “a looming bandwidth apocalypse” have been stoked by companies favoring industry deregulation,” the blog says, “the argument being that if these companies don’t get exactly what they want from lawmakers in Washington, the entire Internet collapses and we’re back to using soup cans and string.”
Should technologists worry about a bandwidth apocalypse, or is the threat overhyped?—Brock Read
Categories: Company-Watch, Research
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