Benjamin Franklin penned the now famous words: “In this world there is nothing certain but death and taxes.” Well, move over death and taxes because there’s another certainty out there – the mega-growth of global Internet traffic in the not-so-distant future.
Worldwide Internet Traffic May Quadruple in Three Years
According to predictions by experts in the industry, worldwide Internet use may quadruple over the next three years, generating nearly 30 exabytes of data each month. To get an idea of the amount of information this entails, we should probably start with a data measurement term we can all relate to – the megabyte. 1000 Megabytes equal one gigabyte; 1000 gigabytes equal one terabyte; 1000 terabytes equal one petabyte; and 1000 petabytes equal one exabyte. You do the math. And, the vast majority of this data – perhaps as much as 90 percent – will be in the form of streaming videos which make up about 25 percent of today’s Internet use.
Broadband Providers Expanding Infrastructure and Implementing New Technologies
The urgent necessity with this kind of Internet growth is expanding the infrastructure that supports it. Broadband providers are scrambling, not only to keep up with the demand for faster and faster speeds, but to make broadband available in every large metropolitan area, small town, and rural location where there are consumers looking to connect to the Web.
In the search for ways to fill the need for world-wide access, bandwidth capabilities, and blazing speeds, the broadband industry is continually embracing each new technology as it becomes available from laying fiber-optic cables under land and sea, deploying new software, and utilizing satellites in areas with little or no existing infrastructure.
The Power of Global Broadband Connections
Amid the predictions of unprecedented growth in Internet usage and the promise of nearly unlimited bandwidth and user capabilities, there are those who believe the Internet will continue along much as it does today, while others foresee a worldwide Internet traffic jam with uncertain reliability. But whatever proves to be the case, it’s certain that Internet users all over the world have come to rely on that ethereal connection to the Web to stay close to family, share moments with friends, conduct business, be entertained, keep abreast of the latest news – from down the block or across the world, and to access information. In short, to communicate with each other. And that will never change.
