Is IPv6 wrestling within an unpredictable telecommunications industry?
02 Nov 2009
The theme of the 40th International Institute of Communications (IIC) conference in Montreal this week was “Wrestling with unpredictability in Global Communications”. The panel I had the pleasure to be part of was under the motto : “Broadband futures”. One of the questions addressed to me : Should we be concerned about a shortage of IP addresses as more people use broadband networks for more things? My answer was predictable, at least to me.
A more fundamental question we all wrestle with however is to qualify and quantify the broadband evolution over a five year horizon. We find two major schools of thought: one sees complete mobile or at least wireless dominance, the other a happy coexistence between mobile and Fibre To The Home or somewhere near. All seem to agree on video dominance in the consumption of bandwidth and on traffic projections growing exponentially over the next five years. The updated Cisco VNI study unveiled at Supercomm last week and presented also at IIC abounds in the same direction. Their projections show hyperconnectivity and 56 exabytes per month sloshing through the internet by 2013 including around 2.2 exabytes of mobile internet and the zettabyte era in sight.
More from Circle ID…
