Study Warns of Internet Brownouts By 2010

Bergkamp10 writes "Consumer and corporate use of the Internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, according to a new study. A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Net by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to US $137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study by Nemertes Research Group. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said. Quoting from the study: 'Our findings indicate that although core fiber 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.' Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year."

Re:yay free market

[Cajun Hell]

We can always invade someone and take their bandwidth.

exchange rate

[oliphaunt]

US $137 billion. how much is that in hard currency, like 500 Euros?

Re:yay free market

[Propaganda13]

I've already warned about this. Nobody will invest in new infrastructure in the US because the investors know the US is facing an epic economic decline, or even collapse, in the near future. We've reached peak bandwidth in the US.

I've been warning people for years too. That's why I've been stockpiling porn for years. One of these days, we just won't have enough bandwidth then these fools will come crying that they can't get enough porn to get by on. Well, I warned them.
STOCKPILE PORN NOW!

Re:I hate life!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate slashdot! This is my last post!

Can I have your loot?

Re:yay free market

[russ1337]

China doesn t want a worthless US dollar. All of the dollars that they received as part of funding our national debt and trade defect aren t good just sitting around. At some point, China is going to want to spend them

Reminds me of the girl down the road who owed my mate 50 bucks. The money was no good... so some other favors came into play.....

What else do you have to trade America? You sure got a purdy mouth!

Re:yay free market

[ILuvRamen]

that's not what will happen. People can only download so much data. I mean really, there's only so much that I can possibly download before I run out of things I want to download. Plus there's the whole hard drive capacity thing. Yes I know internet cache is wiped out repeatedly but besides youtube and stuff, that's all insignificant compared to 2 GB video files. Speaking of that, the high res youtube is gonna crash the entire internet for a while lol.

Apologies to Robert Frost

[Anonymous Coward]

Some say the internet will end in flames,
Some say in greed.
From what I've seen of Slashdot a-holes
I hold with those who favor trolls.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of Microsoft
To say that for destruction greed
Is also great
And would suffice.

Brown-outs

[dintech]

First the internet was a series of tubes.
Then the tubes were full of bees.
Now the bees are stuck in poo?