Daily Mail, UK - In just 20 years, if usage rates continue, all of Britain's power supply could be consumed by internet use.
The cables and fibre optics that send information to our laptops, smartphones and tablets will have reached their limit to send data within eight years, experts warn.
So far, engineers have managed to keep ahead of demand, increasing internet speeds 50-fold in the last decade alone.
The cables and fibre optics that send information to our laptops, smartphones and tablets will have reached their limit.
Experts warn science has reached its limit and that fibre optics can take no more data from a single optical fibre.
The internet companies could always put down additional cables - but that will mean higher bills.
Experts say we could be faced with paying double or will have to put up with an internet that switches off intermittently.
Storing information in large 'server farms', rather than transferring it, would take the strain off the network.
In 2005, broadband internet had a maximum speed of 2 Megabits per second. Today 100Mb-per-second download speeds are available in many parts of the country.
But experts warn that science has reached its limit - and fibre optics can take no more data.
The result, according to Professor Andrew Ellis, who has co-organised the Royal Society meeting on May 11, will be higher internet bills or a cap on internet usage.
2 comments:
I'm going to guess that this is a ploy to raise prices AND limit access.
Any given strand of optical fiber has a limited amount of data that can pass through per unit of time, but the simultaneous use of multiple fibers multiplies the amount of data-per-period that can be sent.
Each individual fiber is quite small. A big bundle occupies only a small space. There's no reason, other than will, why every home cannot have such a big bundle of optical fiber coming into it in the same way that a big bundle of wires for power transmission comes in or for that matter the tiny bundle that carries landline telephone signals.
We need to take over government.
Experts? Same experts who said no one would ever need a computer with more than 2kb capacity? Same experts that predicted online shopping would flop? Maybe this expert is Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, who said in InfoWorld magazine, December 1995, that the Internet would collapse in 1996.
Don't think I'll hold my breath on this one.
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