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Web users’ voracious appetites for YouTube videos, pirated music and movie downloads could produce an unintended consequence soon: choked and slow internet service for many small and medium-sized institutions.

Indeed, studies released by Nemertes Research and IDC Research indicate an internet slowdown could arrive in two-to-five years.

“Today’s broadband is tomorrow’s traffic jam unless we continuously invest, innovate and improve our networks’ ability to handle the traffic,” says Bruce Mehlman, co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance.

Small and medium-sized schools are most at risk, these researchers say, since some purchase internet service over shared, lower-speed lines—much in the same way residential consumers purchase internet connections. Those lines, made of copper or coaxial cable, are not designed to accommodate the relentless demand for bandwidth hogging applications that are being embraced virally across the web, according to Nemertes’ research.

Specifically, the Nemertes study, released in November 2007, found that without a major overhaul in new infrastructure investment, internet performance in North America will cease to be adequate within three to five years.

Moreover, IDC’s study, released this past June, revealed that 51 percent of telecommunications pros surveyed are concerned that increasing bandwidth demands will “break” the internet in as little as two years. 

Small and medium-sized institutions hardest hit would be those that rely on web-based applications for internal operations, web interfaces for school/student transactions, connectivity to remote offices, distance learning courses and back-up services for precious data—to name a few.

Security alert systems relying on cell phones may also suffer mightily. IDC’s survey found 50 percent of telco pros believe web video is already straining mobile phone networks; 81 percent believe the same condition will exist five years from now.

Plus, a thwarted internet could severely threaten future web innovations, adds Karen Wucher, a Nemertes spokesperson. Successful past innovators like MySpace, YouTube, Amazon.com and Google flourished in part because the web was so accommodating, she says. Future innovators, including those in higher education, might not enjoy the same success if they’re dealing with a web moving at the speed of sludge.

Stakeholders with the most to lose—telecommunications goliaths—already appear to be hedging their bets, implementing policies designed to crackdown on the heaviest users of web bandwidth. Comcast, for example, has placed an across-the-board, 250 gigabyte bandwidth cap on every residential broadband customer, effective October 1, 2008.

 

“Bandwidth hogs” who spend hours on the internet every day, downloading countless movies, endlessly watching YouTube videos, and swapping hundreds of pirated songs over peer-to-peer networks may feel the bite.

Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable has responded by experimenting with a metered billing structure for its new customers in Beaumont, Texas. Under the plan, heavier users of the internet will pay more than others.

 

Of course, not all researchers are buying into the cries of gloom-and-doom. In the next installment, we'll look at those who believe the moans of an anemic web are little more than Chicken Little, ‘The-sky-is-falling’ rants.

 

 

Joe Dysart is an internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan. Reach him by e-mail at joe@joedysart.com.