Interesting piece of information found on the BBC website (also quoted in Macworld and probably dozens of other sources): the current use of the Internet could overload the current capacity of the Internet and even result in …crashing the World Wide Web. To be more precise, let’s say that the explosion of the demand for video on the Internet implies a huge investment from the ISPs (Internet Service Providers). In fact they must spend up to US$137 billion in new capacity before 2010 to avoid the aformentioned troubles. So far so good. The only trouble is that, according to Nemertes Research Group – a modest analyst firm -, this is more than twice the amount that ISPs plan to invest. So…shall we really get scared ?

Let’s get into more detail.

1) There is unquestionably a growing demand for bandwidth consuming services (such as P2P, video and data download, streaming). However no one seems really able to forecast that demand.

2) When it comes to innovation, everybody thinks of YouTube, Skype, an iPod (@Jeremy: and Zune of course). But innovation also exists in the less glamorous field of high-speed telecommmunications and networks. Actually there is a fairly large deal of activity deployed there. For example, just a few days before that study came out, two groundbreaking annoucements were made.

- First, a young Aussie researcher from Melbourne University has demonstrated 2 algorithms that considerably speed up existing DSL broadband connections – maybe up to 100 times faster. For instance, it could raise the speed ceiling of traditional ADSL lines from 1 to 20Mbps to approximately 100Mbps. Commmercialization is upcoming.

- Second, Korean scientists announced a new technology called “New Nomadic Local Area Wireless Access” that allows users of mobile phones to download data at a stunning 3,6 Gb/s rate – much more than what the “4G” technologies actually in the pipeline can offer. In fact Korea seems to be heading the race for the definition of the future 4G standard. (BTW, there is a highly valuable, landmark post about these mobile phone generations on Tech IT Easy : have a look).

So…getting back to our study. Innovation on infrastructure and telecommunications technology has been anticipated indeed. Yet it has been approached through a sort of “Moore’s Law”, which doesn’t sound very much as a good idea. Just consider the two previous innovation examples, that haven’t been included, obviously, in this piece of research. And if average broadband capacity was doubling every 18 months or anything, we would have noticed this earlier for sure …

3) Final element: I am a staunch believer in the law of supply and demand (yes, and I am French). If there is a need for further investments, money will come in. Granted, there might be a huge need for network maintenance and upgrading but then there are many, many Internet users, including wealthy governments and corporations. $60 billion are missing, on a three year basis ? Well, that’s only $67 a year per American, which means 30 dollars per household. Almost 6 times smaller than the defence budget…

So, all in all, when an almost unkown research company publishes a report part-funded by the telco industry, which openly calls for universal broadband deployment (with public support, naturally), saying that “Such gridlock would drastically affect how people use the web and could mean the next Google or YouTube simply doesn’t get off the ground”, well, I just don’t buy it.

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