Analysts warn of US broadband meltdown
BT watching UK situation closely
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Updated Analysts in the US are warning that the country's broadband infrastructure will not be able to keep up with demand, and without massive investment will have reached maximum capacity by 2010.
A study from Nemertes Research predicts a massive increase in the amount of traffic that the network has to carry, and a subsequent slowdown, almost to the point of gridlock. This, the firm warns, could prevent innovation on the net, and stop "the next Google" from emerging.
"Our findings indicate that although core fibre 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," the firm says.
"We estimate the financial investment required by access providers to 'bridge the gap' between demand and capacity ranges from $42 billion to $55 billion, or roughly 60-70 per cent more than service providers currently plan to invest."
We rang BT to get the company's response to the research, and discover whether or not a similar fate lies in store for British net users. But the owner of Blighty's broadband infrastructure started laughing before we could even frame our question.
We're not sure how to interpret this.
Is BT unconvinced that this is an issue even in the US? Or is the prospect of having to invest such vast sums of money so horribly terrifying that laughter is the only possible coping mechanism?
We did eventually manage to ask the telco for its opinion. "I'll think very carefully about the answer and send you an email," the press officer said.
We're still waiting. Presumably the reply has been caught up in a broadband traffic jam.
You can read more about the Nemertes research here. ®
Update
BT has sent us the following statement:
BT keeps a very careful watching brief on capacity and demand to ensure that the former is not outstripped by the latter. To that end, we have increased DSL speeds from 512 Kbs to up to 8 Mbps, and will be starting to triple these speeds to up to 24 Mbps from next spring. We are also committed to using fibre in greenfield sites from next year, and will play a full and active role in the forthcoming debate on next generation access and the way forward for UK plc.
COMMENTS
Duh
When you change a nationalised department (BT) into a for-profit organisation that thanks to regulatory interference (Ofcom) that sees said company making a loss on every line that gets sold (Openreach/LLU) to THEIR BUSINESS RIVALS who have no interest whatsoever in setting up their own infrastructure, do you really expect BT to give a flying fig?
"bt dont care and never will..."
With such amazing incentive courtesy of Piss-Off Com, is it really any wonder?
Voipex can help ease the pressure on the net
My company has some clever software that reduces the overall impact of Voice traffic on the internet, so whilst this will not sole the problem people who use our VIBE (Voice over IP Broadband Enhancement software) will recue the overall payloads clogging up the net freeing more space for other traffic.
A quick fix that improves the quality all of your voice conversations.
www.voip-x.co.uk
How to solve it
Well its looks a no brainer to me.
Actually get your head out of the sand (isps) and do something REAL about spam. Since about 95% of email is spam think how much bandwidth would be saved if you actually DID something.
You could then actually do something about DOS attacks and continual probes by compromised kit and save even more bandwidth.
Not only that it would be green too, think of all the power you will save by not having to add more kit to cope with demand to transmit all that spam and all that DOS/probe traffic.
but then back in the real world.....
I guess just adding more bandwidth and moaning about it is simpler.
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