Monday, April 21, 2008

ATT EXEC: INTERNET MAY BE OVERLOADED BY 2010



ZDNET An AT&T executive 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.. . .

He claimed that the "unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic" would increase fifty-fold by 2015 and that AT&T was investing $19bn to maintain its network and upgrade its backbone network. Cicconi added that more demand for high-definition video will put increasing strain on the Internet infrastructure. "Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon and HD is seven to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today," he said.

The AT&T executive pointed out that the Internet only exists thanks to the infrastructure provided by a group of mostly private companies. "There is nothing magic or ethereal about the Internet--it is no more ethereal than the highway system. It is not created by an act of God but upgraded and maintained by private investors," he said.

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