That’s right, according to AT&T the Internet is to hit full capacity by next year. As an IT guy, I’m always wondering why a company that makes its living selling bandwidth is now telling us there will be no more capacity by next year. I understand what AT&T is trying to say. The Web 2.0 change has now moved the Internet from a medium where we mostly viewed static web pages, to a media extravaganza where we can watch HD movies, listen to music, upload videos and enjoy entertainment content at the click of a button. This change in content means there’s a much greater need for bandwidth. But why yell it to the masses? Why not just upgrade your infrastructure and satisfy your customers? The cynical side of me can’t help but wonder if AT&T is throwing this out there so that next year they can up their monthly rates to “Pay” for the upgrades that need to happen.
Suffice it to say, I don’t believe a word of it. Internet connections have moved from 28.8k and 56k dial up modems to DSL/Cable and now to FiOS, all in the pursuit of faster pipelines to the Internet. While there may be some companies with some bandwidth problems, technology will prevail. Maybe a new compression algorithm will come out, or wireless Internet across the newly available old analog television spectrum, or better hardware compression? Whatever the case, I’m not going to believe a company that makes its money selling access to the Internet when they tell me that the access is going to get full next year. Talk about creating your own supply/demand. Jim Cicconi, Vice President of Legislative Affairs for AT&T said this "We are going to be butting up against the physical capacity of the Internet by 2010”.
Nope, don’t see it and don’t believe a word of it. I remember being told that hard drives would never hold more than 500 GB of data. What happened? Someone figured out how to stand the data on its side instead of flat and now 1.5 TB drives are available to purchase. Processors would never be faster than 1GHz due to size limitations, heat problems and bus speeds. Look what we have now, dual and quad core processors that get around most of those problems. AT&T is a for-profit company. I can’t help but take this kind of nay saying, doomsday prediction for what it is, a way to raise rates in 2010.
Gregory S. Gartland, PMP
IBM Certified Administrator, Developer, Trainer
The PCA Group
Where passion for technology is our way of life
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