"After I invented the internet and they made me President, I invented global warming. Have a nice day."
Posted on 04/25/2008 9:14:34 PM PDT by kingattax
Doom-filled warnings arrive from AT&T this week. The company says that without substantial investment in network infrastructure, the Internet will essentially run out of bandwidth in just two short years.
Blame broadband, says AT&T. Decades of dealing with the trickle of bandwidth consumed by voice and dialup modems left AT&T twiddling its thumbs. The massive rise of DSL and cable modem service in the 2000s has had AT&T facing a monstrous increase in the volume of data transmissions. And that's set to increase another 50 times between now and 2015. That's enough, says AT&T, to all but crash the system.
In response, AT&T says it's investing $19 billion to upgrade the backbone of the Internet, the routers, servers, and connections where the bulk of traffic is processed.
Of course, AT&T is using this breathlessness in part to point fingers beyond simple broadband use. Web video (especially high-definition video) is the most commonly mentioned bandwidth hog. AT&T says video alone will eat up 80 percent of traffic in two years vs. just 30 percent now. One wonders how YouTube doesn't collapse under the pressure. Hmmm.
Meanwhile, many are wondering whether this is prelude to AT&T announcing (or not announcing, but doing anyway) a traffic prioritization/shaping system like Comcast has been tinkering with... and which has earned it nothing but scorn. Net neutrality (which would forbid premium pricing for certain Internet applications and destinations) is a topic that continues to be hotly debated on Capitol Hill, and telcos are anxious to kill the idea since they'd love to be able to charge additional money for different kinds of web traffic. If the whole Internet is about to crash, well, that makes AT&T's argument all the more compelling, doesn't it?
And your saying that the leasing and transport agreements signed by AT&T are not making them money? Not one bit or byte crosses AT&T’s lines (fiber or otherwise) without them gaining some remuneration. I can guarantee, moneys are changing hands.
Get ready for ‘net2’. With fiber everywhere, the telcos can build a new backbone, stick all the high volume and ‘pro’ oriented traffic up there, and switch the feed to your local fiber loop at the substation level. For years, the broadcast industry has been using an existing network of fiber lines owned by various utilities.
The Y2whatever syndrome..
Frankly, it's THEIR network and they ought to be able to whatever damn well please 'em with it.
You can expect the carriers to act in concert, without prior collusion, to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with, or to the net if "net neutrality" becomes the law of the land.
They won't invest another dime. Ever.
When the traffic limit is reached on the backbone you will hear wailing and knashing of teeth unlike what you hear even now over gasoline prices.
AlGore says we are now at “the tipping point” and we’re all gonna fry long before the internet croaks in 2010. Not to worry.
I think the early days of CB radio are sort of the model. Worked fine until too many people found it. Then there was no financial incentive to expand it, so it kind of crashed of its own weight.
Yeah, and the world was supposed to end on January 01, 2000 at 12:00:01 AM when every computer in the world was going to crash.
Let it crash, I say! I’m in the process of converting all my computers to use RFCs 1149 and 2549 as transmission protocols!
Who needs AT&T?
Mark
Ever since they broke up the phone company and forced AT&T to compete it has consistently been one of the most badly managed companies in America.
Oh the humanity! This means I won’t be able to get my daily dosage of V-I-A-G-R-A ads!
I've worked with phone companies large and small, including AT&T, all over the country (and in 16 other countries). Believe it or not, AT&T is one of the better ones.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's utterly amazing to me that the phone system works at all, given who is running it and how it is run......
I've worked with phone companies large and small, including AT&T, all over the country (and in 16 other countries). Believe it or not, AT&T is one of the better ones.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's utterly amazing to me, with all I've seen in the telecom world, that the phone system works at all in this country, given who is running it and how it is run......
as long as Equinix, the home of the internet keeps growing, which it is, the internet will be fine.
"After I invented the internet and they made me President, I invented global warming. Have a nice day."
lol
No, they should not be able to do what they want with it.
The internet is NOT owned by the companies who have pieces of it.
It is a world network and as such is “owned” by the people.
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