Recently in the Exaflood Category

Those of us who have tirelessly promoted the message that broadband Internet access is critical to our economy, our competitiveness, our environment and our infrastructure continue to be vindicated in the media.  News stories about with reports of the cost savings and productivity gains that will be achieved if more Americans have broadband Internet access.  One of my favorites is a report from The American Consumer Institute that describes all the ways that wide adoption of broadband Internet access will be good for the environment. One of the highlights of this reports is a simple fact that states that reductions in first-class mail, as well as the plastics saved, by downloading music and video, could reduce emissions by 67.2 million tons over the next 10 years.  In addition, the report points out that increased telecommuting could save another 588 million tons over the next ten years.

While there are clearly countless ways to calculate the positive impact that reduced emissions resulting from deeper broadband penetration across the US, the bottom line is that under any scenario, all of us would benefit.  The Exaflood is coming and we need everyone to be prepared for it and ready to particpate in it.  This fundamental truth underscores IIA's core objective to advocate for increased broadband access across the US and support the work and solutions developed by groups like Connect Kentucky and One-Economy, which have successfully created mechanisms to bridge public-private programs and increase penetration in their targeted areas.

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.

On May 22, the Internet Innovation Alliance convened some of the brightest minds in broadband to discuss the exaflood -the overload of digital data that threatens to swamp the Internet's infrastructure, resulting in congestion and lost innovation for consumers and businesses.  We also addressed how the quickly and probable it would be for attaining the goal of getting truly high speed broadband to all Americans.  And of course, who pays.  By way of summary, these convened experts agreed that there was indeed an exaflood, fueled by the large and growing amount of data flowing over the Internet as a result of video and other applications that were not conceived a few years ago.  The panelists also agreed that there was a huge and promising future for broadband applications and services, but that the financing and business models are not yet clear for infrastructure providers.  All agree that policy makers can have significant impact on the market place and how it responds to the coming explosion of internet traffic.

I have the great pleasure to be writing today from Lake George , NY where the annual Telecosum event is taking place.  It is an event sponsored by George Gilder and Steve Forbes to bring together big thinkers in technology and telecommunications.  Earlier today I sat in on a panel discussion, The Exaflood: Managing the coming digital deluge.   Panelist Andrew Odlyzko spoke about his perspective on internet traffic growth disputing other assertions that traffic is growing at as much as 100% year-over-year.  He believes that while yes, traffic is growing, the rate of growth is slowing.   Bob Metcalfe raised the idea that, "if you build it, they will come" pointing out that we didn't know what applications would develop in building the initial version of the internet, why would we wait to find the application before upgrading.  Johna Til Johnson pointed to her study that looks at supply and demand independently and determines that by 2010, demand for internet traffic will outpace supply in 2010. Lane Patterson split the difference in estimating traffic growth.  He believes we will see a growth rate of more like 75%.  All said, the entire panel agrees the Exaflood is coming, the question that remains open for debate is how the telcos and cable companies will manage it.

There is an excellent article in USA Today by Leslie Cauley.  The article does a good job of breaking down for the consumer how new applications like video are changing the web, why consumers should care and what it means for them.