CIP Technologies, a photonics solutions firm, has just published the results of its new 'Global Bandwidth' study, which predicts that by 2018 global bandwidth usage could have grown to 40 or even 100 times the levels seen in networks today.

The growing popularity of online video and Internet TV (IPTV) services, such as the BBC's iPlayer and YouTube, are once again blamed for helping to cause the bulk of this rise. CIP fears that operators will find it economically difficult to grow their existing networks to meet this demand.

Naturally CIP, a somewhat un-impartial advocate of fibre optic networking, suggests that fibre broadband networks (FTTx) may be the only long-term solution to the problem. Still they do have a point, demand is beginning to threaten supply and a major change is needed before service performance begins to suffer.

Presently the UK is still debating its options for future fibre development and while this does appear to be progressing it is still someway off returning a concrete plan. In the meantime smaller firms, such as H2O Networks, are already beginning to rollout Fibre to the Home (FTTH) networks capable of delivering speeds at up to 100Mbps to specific cities (news).