Growing, Growing, Gone?                          

I read an article today in Internet Telephony Magazine (TMC) written by the executive editor that outlined a study done by Cisco that confirmed that video was the fastest growing application on the internet. I find that comes as no surprise as we at Unitel have seen many, many more requests from clients to provide pricing for video solutions. As a VoIP provider we have to be concerned with each different type of application being supported over the internet connection especially those that require real time quality of service.

Some of the numbers from the study:

• 37% of internet traffic is video.
• The AVG broadband connection generates 4.3GB of internet traffic per month in visual networking applications.
• The AVG broadband connection generates 11.4GB of total internet traffic per month.
• The top 10% of global subscribers generate over 60% of the total internet traffic (it’s the 80/20 rule in action!).

Cisco has forecasted that internet traffic will increase five-fold by 2013. This means that internet providers have to plan for a seven-fold increase to accommodate peak traffic spikes.  That sounds incredible doesn’t it?

Another area that will have HUGE impact on bandwidth needs will be wireless 4G. Think about it…all those new applications that will be available on a simple handset. Things that just aren’t available on those units today will be ready to go once 4G is prime time. As people move to 4G handheld devices the load on the internet will naturally increase.

So my question is will we ever reach a saturation point in regard to internet bandwidth? Will we ever reach a point where it feels like dial up again? I think we’ve been staying ahead of the curve so far and will continue to develop new and better ways to provide bandwidth. So keep the YouTube postings going!