Re: Should we oppose the Data Superhighway/NII?

["Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>]

Doug Merritt says:
> I hate to disagree, considering that I prefer to agree with the philosophy
> here, but it *can't* work that way, regardless of what we wish.
> 
> The problem is that bandwidth is a highly limited resource, just like
> real estate is a limited resource. Eventually we will complete saturate
> network bandwidth no matter what technology is used.

Lets see whether this is reasonable.

A single fiber optic strand has enough capacity in theory to carry the
equivalent of every call made in the U.S. during the peak capacity
utilization period on Mother's Day. A single fiber can carry more data
than can be transmitted by the entire radio spectrum from low
frequency AM to Ku band satelite. Thats bandwidth for literally
thousands of simultaneous video signals.

Using switching technology rather than shared access LAN style
technology, every person in the world could concievably be sending and
receiving that much at once.

I don't know about you, but I personally can't produce more than 750
simultaneous videos at once for network distribution, so I suppose I'm
uninteresting, but even the people who can do more than that are
likely going to be fine. If they aren't, well, I suppose they could
get TWO fibers coming into their home, or maybe even TEN or ONE
HUNDRED if necessary.

> These days it's easy to be optimistic, because bandwidth is growing
> geometrically. The problem is that there is no way in hell that that
> trend can continue indefinitely. One or two decades hence we will saturate
> theoretical limits.

I suspect that we have a wee bit longer to go than that. When people
start faxing themselves regularly we may have to go to slightly more
exotic technologies.

Perry