A common concern among telecom vendors is the issue of bandwidth. In the age of YouTube and BitTorrent, we have seen an increase in demand for high-bandwidth applications and services such as video, and this demand only seems to be getting bigger.

So what does this mean for those in the telecom business and for users on the receiving end? According to an article by Kevin Fitchard of Telephony, the Internet is going to…break.

At NXTcomm this year, IDC-Tellabs did a survey of the attendees and found that a majority “believe consumer demands and carriers are on a collision course.” Meaning the Internet is going to “break.”

What exactly does “break” mean?
Well, according to Lee Doyle, group vice president and general manager of IDC’s network infrastructure and security products division it’s open to interpretation.

“Broken could apply to the business model, or it could be taken more literally: a feeling that capacity and user experience will degrade as the costs of maintain the infrastructure of the Internet rise” said Doyle. “Regardless of the interpretation, though, there is a definite and strong concern in the industry that the way broadband is offered today cannot keep pace with the growing demand of subscribers.”

For now, operators are taking different approaches to address the need for more bandwidth and until there’s some sort of official regulation, everyone will continue to try to solve this problem with their own solutions.

By the way, did you know that video already takes up about 30% of all Internet traffic and that it is only going to grow and be an even bigger bandwidth hog?

Written by Lauren Chen