The Internet Distinction

(By the way: April Fools!)

(Original posted at Public Knowledge)

“If bandwidth providers could deduct a reasonable percentage of the revenue from their residential service from their overall tax bill, they would be incentivized to stretch bandwidth further while simultaneously exploring alternative communication supplies.”

Public Knowledge: Peak Bandwidth

By: John Bergmayer

The era of plentiful, low-cost bandwidth is approaching an end. The supply of bits, the raw material of our information economy, is rapidly dwindling. The good news is that commercially viable mitigation options are ready for implementation. The bad news is that unless mitigation is orchestrated on a timely basis, the economic damage to the world economy will be dire and long-lasting.

Bandwidth is the lifeblood of modern civilization. It fuels most communication worldwide and is an input for entertainment, commerce, telemedicine and a myriad of other products used in everyday life.

Dark fiber has been generous in yielding copious quantities of bandwidth to fuel world economic growth for over a century, but that period of plenty is changing.
In the following, we describe the nature of the problem, options for mitigation, and required timing.

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