“Danger Will Robinson” – Internet Capacity Crunch in 8 Years Time

Professor Andrew Ellis of Aston University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science has once again warned that the Internet “could be on the brink … of a capacity crunch“, which might force ISPs to throttle your broadband and it could happen within the next 8 years. Best get that tinfoil hat.

The warning is largely a repeat of the same comments that were made earlier this year (here) and there is often a small semblance of truth to such remarks, although they usually make the incorrect assumption that the industry won’t adapt or evolve to resolve it.

Professor Ellis said:

“Demand for internet capacity keeps soaring, and we’re now reaching the point where it’s increasingly difficult to stay ahead of that demand using current approaches. It’s incredible we’ve managed to stay ahead this long, but now researchers are finding they just cannot fit much more data down traditional fibre optic lines.

Soon, unless we increase costs by deploying more fibres, we may need radical changes to the way we either use or distribute data if we are to overcome this capacity crunch. We should start having the conversation now – are consumers willing to accept higher charges for increased bandwidth or can we be more considered about the capacity we consume? Will we lay additional cables, or will we look to the likes of Netflix to help us manage demand?“

Suffice to say that comments like this have consistently cropped up ever since the days of dial-up. Somebody is always warning that the Internet can’t cope or will run out capacity, yet strangely it never quite happens. Well not so strangely, perhaps.

In reality the industry usually adjusts through a mix of innovation and or spending on the construction of new international fibre optic cable links (e.g. this one). Granted we haven’t seen as many of these links being built in recent years, but that’s largely because scientific innovation has found new ways to push more data down existing cables.

Going forwards there is still a fair bit of additional innovation to come that should continue to add improvements to existing cables and if the time comes when we need more physical connections, which it almost certainly will, then no doubt somebody will build them because the demand will exist to pay for it.

In the meantime Professor Ellis will be warning the world about this impending crunch as part of Lightfest 2015, which is being held on Friday 25th September 2015 at the Library of Birmingham. But you really need not worry.