The Internet sky really is falling
07 May 2009
Many folks are familiar with the modeling we’ve done over the past few years highlighting the fact that Internet demand is outstripping capacity, specifically access capacity. The findings were, to put it mildly, controversial: We’ve been called everything from carrier shills to nut-jobs. (No, the research wasn’t sponsored. And we never claimed your fillings were receiving extraterrestrial radio signals).
The bottom line? We were right. YouTube recently announced it’s discontinuing video delivery to certain geographies due to — ahem — lack of access capacity. And providers from telcos to cable companies are implementing “usage caps” to keep users from, er, consuming “too much” bandwidth. Seems the only thing we got wrong was the timing –we anticipated the crunch hitting in the 2011/2012 timeframe, but we’re seeing it happening already.
