Internet Bandwidth Crunch, part 2
Is there an upcoming Internet bandwidth crunch? I’ve touched on this issue before and generally would argue–along with any telecom blogger worth his/her salt–that the impending bandwidth crisis getting mainstream press is telco-funded garbage.
A few rough statistics. Internet traffic grows at, more or less, a steady exponential rate, approximately 50% per year. In a free market, the increase in demand would be matched, eventually, by an increase in supply. In the telco world, well, the telcos just start angling for legislation to allow for them to restrict demand, rather than build out infrastructure. They can create a “bandwidth crunch” at will simply by refusing to keep up with demand; much as Intel–if they had a sufficient monopoly–could create a processing crunch simply by stopping R&D.
Imagine if IBM had maintained a monopoly on the PC and had only leased them out instead of selling them. Imagine if they decided that, given that paradigm, R&D into new hardware was just to risky to the bottom line and that they’d be better served by just maintaining their monopoly through legislation. Sounds unreasonable? Welcome to the world of telecom.
Our world, delivered? Our world progresses. Deliver that.