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AT&T Claims Internet to Reach Capacity in 2010

Posted by timothy on from the calls-for-even-more-paper-towels dept.

An anonymous reader writes "CNET News has a piece in which AT&T claims that the Internet's bandwidth will be saturated by video-on-demand and such by 2010. Says the AT&T VP: 'In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.' Similarly: 'He claimed that the "unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic" would increase 50-fold by 2015 and that AT&T is investing $19 billion to maintain its network and upgrade its backbone network.'"

12 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. That quote... by 26199 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...is so obviously wrong that he's either a) been misquoted, b) an idiot or c) misquoting someone else. Given how impressive his title is I'd say that last one is most likely...

    As for the internet "reaching capacity"... that's a pretty meaningless thing to say. At the root of all this we get the actual "story": bandwidth use is likely to increase more quickly over the next few years than ever before.

    Is anyone really surprised? The fast links are starting to be there, so people are starting to figure out ways of using them that appeal to the masses. Exponential growth is not exactly a new concept in the computer industry...

    Still. Not a good time to be an ISP.

    1. Re:That quote... by HeLLFiRe1151 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The title he has is just another name for a lobbyist. Start a myth, get other people to believe such a myth, then get congress to force people to give them more money to pay for the myth. Seems like a standard practice.

      --
      I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
    2. Re:That quote... by kesuki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the telcom industry has been the most radically changed by new technology, in the 1970s people had telephone service, and unless they could afford long distance rates, they called relatives long distances away only for emergencies. Today, for $20 instead of getting 20 hours of long distance phone calls you get unlimited long distance through the US and sometimes Canada, often with only a small surcharge for calling Europe, or even a plan with unlimited calls over seas for a slightly larger monthly fee..

      this is a drastic change, and it was only made possible by fiber optics, instead of laying expensive copper cables, cheap glass and cheap lasers are used instead.

      and no the network wasn't laid for free, rather the googles of the world are paying for it, because the telcom industry discovered a much deeper pocket than consumers ever had, now that so much data can be sent over such a cheap infrastructure.

      the market changed, and thanks to new technology they're rolling in money, even though more and more people are dropping land lines for wireless phones (which have also boosted telcom profits, $50 for the main plan plus $15 per phone... or more, for more minutes a month..)

      --
      https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
  2. I'm still waiting by mea_culpa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Where is my fiber to the curb? A lot of my tax dollars were freely handed to them to do it. A decade later and what do they have to show? A report the the tubes will be clogged in less than 2 years.
    I want congressional hearings, and heads on platters.

    1. Re:I'm still waiting by colmore · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It took an act of the whitehouse to get telephones and powerlines connected to everyone in the US. If they feel like they can make more money not installing fiber everywhere, then we won't be getting fiber any time soon.

      The funny thing is that after decades of "deregulation" we have less of a market economy than ever before. The largest businesses in the country (and this is especially true in telecom) hold their positions with a massive buttress of government contracts and protectionist legislation. Government regulation doesn't do half the damage to a market that government favor brokering does.

      --
      In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
  3. Three years, eh? by Ralph+Spoilsport · · Score: 5, Insightful
    'In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.'

    Sh'yeah - right Wally. 20 households eating up hundreds of millions of users worth of bandwidth, many many hundreds of thousands of which are already:
    a: bombing away on bittorrent
    b: watching youtube (reminds me - I need to watch last night's Bill Maher...)
    c: downloading eons of pr0n
    d: spamming the planet with adverts for C4iL1s and v14grA?

    Whatever he's smokin' - I want some. Now. It's been a long and pretty dorky day, I could use some massive hallucinogens.

    Give the horsey some sugar cubes. Aaaaah - look - it's all PAISLEY...

    RS

    --
    Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
  4. The Sky is Orange by EEPROMS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a typical company FUD tactic especially when costs in reality are going down or are static (share holders don't like static income growth). In this case speeds on fibre have increased massively over the last ten years with data speeds going from cutting edge single digit gigabyte speeds to terrabyte speeds within a few years. Some may say equipment and maintenance costs have gone up but that is also FUD because fibre maintenance and distances between amplifiers has increased and over all equipment failure rates have dropped.

    1. Re:The Sky is Orange by thue · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And in any case, they live by selling bandwidth. If the need for bandwidth increases explosively they should be happy as they can sell more.

      But for some reason they insist on casting a bonanza in demand for their primary product as a problem for them.

  5. Corrections by noidentity · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In three years' time, 20 typical households will receive more traffic than the entire Internet today.'[...] [AT&T is investing $19 billion of taxpayer money it was given years back to maintain our network and upgrade our backbone network like they were supposed to do years ago.

    There, fixed that for you

  6. $19 billion out of how much? by RalphBNumbers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    AT&T's annual income was $118 billion in 2007.

    If they're only investing $19 billion over the next 2 years until 2010, that's 8% of their income they spend on maintaining and upgrading their network.
    And they make some pretty huge profits, even after all of their expenses ($11 billion in 2007)

    If they're only spending 8% of their money on network maintenance and upgrades, and raking in huge profits, while their network fails to keep up with demand (which, contrary to alarmist reports is multiplying more slowly than it used to), then they need to spend more than 8%! Doing otherwise, when you run an essential utility, ought to be considered criminal negligence imho.

    --
    "The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
  7. Re:life mirrors art by The+End+Of+Days · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please don't tell me what I want from the Internet, thank you.

  8. This industry is pathetic by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know that an industry is in a sad, sad state when it is bitching about an increase in demand for its product. Particularly when that increase in demand is coupled with a decrease in cost to supply.

    If any of those slimy bastards try and insist that the free market is working, point them to this. When you can afford to get upset when your customers want more of your product, the idea that you are vulnerable to "competition" is a bad joke(yes, I know, the economics of overselling are part of this).

    Can you imagine any real industry doing this?
    General Motors: "OMG, the interstate highway system will cause your factories to explode due to excessive demand!"
    Hollywood: "We must not have more than 5 TV channels, or the demand for made-for-TV movies will overwhelm our studio capacity!"
    Pathetic.