Increased video usages consumes excess bandwidth - bottleneck ahead

USA Today had an interesting article today - Video, interactivity could ensnare Web users by 2010 - based on a study by business technology analysts Nemertes Research.

The study assessed both infrastructure investment and current/projected traffic patterns independently, and compared the two. While the findings indicated that "core fiber and switching/routing resources will scale nicely to support virtually any conceivable user demand, Internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will likely cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years."

While they don't suggest tha the Internet will collapse, "users will experience a slow, subtle degradation, so it's back to the bad old days of dial-up," says Nemertes President Johna Till Johnson.

In looking at how bandwidth is being consumed, Johnson highlights YouTube. "Two years ago, nobody knew what YouTube was. Now, it's generating 27 petabytes (27 million gigabytes) of data per month."

Much of today's traditional telecommunications infrastructure (cable, DSL, FioS, satellite) is architected for asynchronous delivery of content to both business and residential customers. Wireless technologies, being more scalable, flexible and rapid to deploy has an opportunity to be a 'bypass' technology, alleviating the coming bottlenecks to deliver the Internet experience that consumers are looking for.