Monday, November 13, 2006

Tech: bandwidth - when too much is never enough

“The explosive popularity of YouTube and other bandwidth-intensive Internet operations is good news for Cisco Systems as its profits surged.”

This quick note in a telecoms industry newsletter is a neat reminder of the mantra of the future: “bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth”.

Endless data dumps, video calls, video on demand, permanent streaming video on demand,…

The applications, the demand, will never slacken. It’s the commodity of the future – and the battleground, and the dividing line between the haves and have-nots. IP bandwidth demands will intrude on all other forms of information exchange.

Anyone for investing in dark fibre?

2 comments:

Bazza said...

Wow. I just read that Wikipedia article about dark fibre. It's like dark matter in the universe; all of our astronomical calculations tell us it must be there but we can't quite nail it!
Dark fibre seems to equate with virtual or theoretical bandwidth in that companies are planning around it, working with it but it aint there!

S Simmonds said...

Well, dark fibre is actually unused capacity - cable that's there and not turned on - hence dark.

The Wikipedia article suggests an overcapacity [of unused bandwidth], but I'm quite wary of that judgment call. Overall, there can be no doubt that demand for bandwidth will escalate.