AT&T Says Internet's Current Architecture Will Reach Its Limit By 2010

[engine]

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.
Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.

"The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today," he said. "In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today."

AT&T Says, Internet's Current Architecture Will Reach Its Limit By 20 [news.com]

[thecoalman]

The reason I say unrealistic is because you can achieve good results at lower bandwidth. All things being equal if you're comparing a DVD and HD disc side by side on two small TV's you're not going to see much difference. Same goes if you're comparing a 50Mbit video and 25Mbit on two side by side large screen TV's. Bear in mind 50Mbit is the max, it's not used. Just like the max for DVD is almost 10Mbit a hollywood movie is typically encoded at 6Mbit which is quite sufficient.

You'll have better delivery codecs as well, that 6Mbit DVD is encoded using MPEG2 . The same quality can be achieved using WMV roughly at 1500kbps.

Right now technically you can achieve HD quality (or very near) at the speeds they are offering now on higher end plans like comacast's 16Mbit plan. Good luck finding a server with video like that other than few demo sites I've seen. :P

[vincevincevince]

Mummy, everyone is using my internet more, but they aren't giving me lots of extra money. Please come up with a way to make them prop up my crumbling telecoms monopoly.

[aleksl]

possibly a basis for infrastructure investment tax breaks or something similar

they want more of your tax dollars to pay for their infrastructure. that is a 104% guarantee.

[incrediBILL]

Please come up with a way to make them prop up my crumbling telecoms monopoly.

It's not crumbling, it's just not experiencing explosive growth so the stock is stagnant.

It's all about the good old boys having a fit because they can't buy a new Ferrari in 'Q1.

The problem is the root of telco problems is based on the grade of service model and typically they never installed enough gear for 100% usage, only enough for partial usage since not everyone is on the phone at the same time it was never a problem.

Along come computers, modems and faxes that were connected all day long and that's when the problems started.

So the irony is that whatever new technology they deploy will already be outmoded and the demand will have possibly outpaced the supply by the time the implementation is complete just like ISDN was old news before customers were even buying it so whatever they do today won't be enough before it's even finished.

Fun, huh?

[Hugene]

I think thecoalman said it all, amazing and accurate calculation. She/he should have been the one doing the interview.

[dbdev]

if in 20 years i don't have a cluster of t3 fibre lines to my front door im gonna be pissed.

[grelmar]

Anyone remember having fun in the 80s by finding an old mechanical switch on the grid, and opening up a 9600b connection through it, and just keeping it open, until the switch overheated and arc welded itself?

I wonder if there's a modern equivalent. AT&T could use a could nose tweaking.