Internet Capacity Could Max Out By 2010

PC World via Washington Post:

Consumer and corporate use of the Internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, according to a study released last week.

A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Internet by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to $137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to thestudy, by Nemertes Research Group, an independent analysis firm. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said.

Read the whole story: PC World via Washington Post

Comments

[DesertTruth]

10:45 PM on 11/25/2007

This is a load of bull. You can bet that if anyone has trouble it will be the US certainly, but only because very few people have the sense to demand net neutrality of their congressmen. Even if we did, nothing will happen until corporations are block from lobbying for their own interests only.

[morphizm]

10:16 PM on 11/25/2007

People still read the Washington Post? Wow.

[kellygrrrl]

06:27 PM on 11/25/2007

more "Corporatist America" propoganda

It must really pain Cheney and Rumsfeld that they won't be around long enough to OWN the NET.

but it will be a much-appreciated gift to their loved ones

[Croeso]

06:01 PM on 11/25/2007

The study in no way took account of the amount of bandwidth wasted by the spammers that are the bane of existence on the internet. Paying attention to this waste of our bandwidth resources by scammers and cheats and working to eliminate it will not only give us more room for legitimate use of the net, it will also provide a more satisfying experience for the great majority of us who are not interested in pills to increase our penus size or pictures of lusty babes boinking (insert your own favorite illicit fantasy here).

[Visceral]

05:42 PM on 11/25/2007

They won't do anything. This is too good an excuse to jack up prices and thereby restrict the Internet to corporate-controlled content.

[jsarets]

03:02 PM on 11/25/2007

As far as I know, the backbone "superhighways" have more than enough capacity to sustain growth for at least a few decades. It's the last-mile "side streets" that are choking the Internet. Of course, this is only a major problem in America.

The telcos simply don't want to invest their own money in their infrastructure. Surely they could shake the money out of somebody else, such as application service providers (e.g. Google).

They already oversell bandwidth at ratios that would make airline executives blush. Isn't that the definition of brownout, when you pay for a certain amount of utility and don't always get it?

P2P is obviously the enemy. I learned in Economics 101 that it's an absolutely horrible situation when a new technology arrives that greatly increases demand for your product. Wait, wasn't it the other way around?

No, P2P is evil because it competes for bandwidth with streaming video, which is to be a major cash cow (someday) for the telcos. Simply put, it should be illegal for ISPs to become ASPs, and vice versa. It's a major conflict of interest.

The telcos need to quit whining about how life as a communications monopolist is so horrible and take responsibility for their situation. Invest in your networks, and look into more effective ways of pricing bandwidth.

Sometimes toll collectors actually have to upgrade the roads.

[joe79]

02:01 PM on 11/25/2007

and who will come to our rescue over this bullshite report? AT&T and Sprint with their strap-ons of new charges? suck an egg.

[hubcap halo]

01:43 PM on 11/25/2007

Reminds me of the Onion Headline:
"Internet Outage Plunges Nation into Productivity."

[rlc41]

12:41 PM on 11/25/2007

Digital village my ass. In many rural areas slow dial-up is the only game in town. Fiber optic lines? It's two copper wires here.

[BRUMALIA]

11:40 AM on 11/25/2007

Running out of capacity???

[Harrier]

02:48 AM on 11/25/2007

I don't see a future with telephone companies. I see a race for people to build wifi in cities and get paid a fee for maintaining it and people using that for everything from communication to seeing entertainment and billboards.

[loki]

10:35 PM on 11/24/2007

Reading this makes me wonder if the capitalist arent going into full court press to get control over the internet and charge anything they want for everything. Its been talked about in the past, kind of went quiet for a while. The Internet "2" and other possibilities for using the the tax payer built internet as a corporate cash cow.
Im sure with the majority of todays politicians are bought and paid for, its probably already a done deal.

[ErnestineBass]

09:55 PM on 11/24/2007

Will Trade: HP w/Vista, 21" LCD Monitor & Printer/Scanner/Fax FOR Hudson Bay TriStripe Smoke Signal Blanket, Good Cond. Must be WOOL, NO polyester knockoffs, please.

Call 555-6969, or leave message in fork of tree hit by lightning last spring.

[Synoia]

09:13 PM on 11/24/2007

Running out of capacity - Complete bullshit.

As mentioned, multi-mode, multi color fibres, and lighting all the adrk fiber that was put in place in th '90s.

And most of the capacity growth is to come from TV, which is read-mostly or read-only -- and so can be cached (stored locally) all over the map. (At last, a new role for local TV stations, who can insert local advertising, so this caching even comes with a revenue stream!)

Don't need to cache all of it, just the most popular 100 things. Caching is well understood, ask IBM, Intel and EMC how they do it.

[godlessclif]

08:08 PM on 11/24/2007

Networks got their monopolies on Radio bandwidth
with the same argument in the 1920s. No increase in bandwidth ever takes the monopoly away. Ham operators opened up radio band after radio band in the 1950s and the monopoly on bandwidth grandfathered in is still in place.

Single mode fibers, one frequency of light modulated carrys 1000 times the air bandwidth
of all radio channels on the air. In the 1990s another technology wavelength division multiplexing [using 256 different colors to share one fiber sort of] multiplied that by 256 and that is 256 shades of red. They are not using green yet.

Going digital multiplied air band width by four time allowing HDTV. This same technology can be used to multiply fiber band width by four.

Then there is signal compression, but I don't know much about that.

I would say the internet companies are full of shit and just want to gouge customers/