Recap of IIA Symposium The Exaflood: Finding Solutions, Part II

The first panel of this Exaflood Symposium examined the pace of new content creation and traffic growth.  Most agreed that content is exponentially exploding.  Progress & Freedom Foundation senior fellow Bret Swanson anticipates 50-fold traffic growth between 2006 and 2015, driven by new video services, cloud computing and other high bandwidth applications.  University of Minnesota professor Andrew Odlyzko generally concurred with such growth projections, but did not see the exaflood as cause for particular concern, since he expects that networks will be able to scale to handle the increased traffic.  Alcatel-Lucent CTO Paul Mankiewich believes that network operators will need to manage network traffic much more aggressively, to cut back on spam and prioritize latency-sensitive packets (such as real time video).  Nick Rockwell, CTO of MTV Networks' Digital Business, observed that an abundance of bandwidth has always preceded innovations on the network, and that "if we don't build it, they cannot come."  Odlyzko suggested that the South Koreans are "5 years ahead" of  America, and that governments have greater ability to impose broadband market rules in other countries:  "In other countries, when government says 'jump,' industry says 'how high.'  In the U.S. they say 'see you in court!'"

The second panel looked at "financing the exaflood," with Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett leading off with the observation that there is a steep uphill business case for increased investments in broadband deployment, let alone market justifications for the existing investments.  Internet users expect "free" content, making it very difficult for carriers to recoup infrastructure investments.  Ciena Corporation CEO Gary Smith generally concurred, observing that the flat fee model will face increasing pressure as "bandwidth hogs" will need to pay more for their greater usage of shared resources.  "All is not well in the ecosystem" since the infrastructure was fundamentally built for voice, and markets are moving much faster than the cycle times of infrastructure investment.  Johna Till Johnson, CEO of Nemertes Research, agreed and suggested that "not a single provider makes money selling access."  She questioned where the investments will come from to meet the needs her firm identified in their landmark 2007 research paper.  UCSD professor and entrepreneur Michael Kleeman worried that we are becoming a "nation of digital haves and have-nots," with carriers gaming each other over payment settlements and peering arrangements.  Kleeman saw a need for greater government intervention, while Smith urged policy makers to "trust the market" and Moffett recommended they "first do no harm."

The entire conference and conversation can be watched via web cast here.