05/29/09 Baltimore, Maryland “While Congress and the watchdog groups focus on solving the crisis in energy scarcity,” notes one of our small-cap chaps, Greg Guenthner, “a sleeping problem is creeping up from behind — bandwidth scarcity.
“Already, the information networks that carry your television programs, phone calls and e-mails are nearing capacity… and without investment today, AT&T expects the Web to reach full capacity by 2010.
“And that’s nothing — we’re already projecting bandwidth needs to increase 100-fold by 2015… These important deadlines are creeping up on everyone involved in the bandwidth biz. Giants like AT&T and Verizon are prepared to lay down mountains of money to increase Internet capacity across the country. Unlike a decade ago, they won’t be doing it by laying traditional metal wires. The future is in fiber optics.
“Fiber optics are superior in nearly every way to the metal wires that likely feed data to your home. Fiber-optic cables carry more data than traditional cables, and they do so farther, at a lower cost and with less interference. Instead of running electrical signals through a metal wire, fiber optics work by carrying pulses of light through flexible glass or plastic fibers.
“Of course, the transition to fiber optics isn’t cheap. Verizon’s footing a $23 billion installation bill for the cable required to connect 18 million homes to its FiOS service by 2010. Verizon’s money — and that of the other utilities and municipalities who are laying fiber lines — will be gushing into companies ready to take advantage of this trend.”
Ian Mathias
Ian Mathias is the managing editor of Agora Financial’s Income Franchise, where he writes and researches about retirement, dividend and fixed income investing. Much of his work is featured in The Daily Reckoning and Lifetime Income Report – Agora Financial’s flagship income investing advisory.
Previously, Ian managed The 5 Min. Forecast, a fun, fast-paced daily look into the future of global markets and macroeconomics. He’s also worked in public relations, where media outlets like Forbes, AP, Yahoo! and MSN Money have syndicated his writing. If he’s not at work, you’ll probably find Ian on a bicycle, racing up and down the “mountains” of Baltimore County. Ian has a BA from Loyola University in Maryland.
The Daily Reckoning is your premier source for making sense of the news Washington and Wall Street generate. Each business day, The Daily Reckoning calls on its stable of world-class writers and thinkers to show you how to get ahead.
Start your 100% FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning today and you’ll get a free research report, “How to Survive the Fall of Social Security.” Simply enter your email address below to get your free report and join over 495,000 worldwide Daily Reckoning subscribers!
We Respect Your Privacy and We will
Never Share or Sell Your Email Address
Plausible enough. So who are these companies? Finisar, Brocade, Cisco?
Long-haul is not in any better shape, getting on and off the fiber-optic highways is still expensive, and the B/W into 85% of the regions is still at levels that stagger the imagination – OC-3 what is this?
AT&T wants YOU to pay for the install.
Methinks that the Greater Depression will take care of bandwidth issues, as if there really are any, for many years to come, and, if “we” come out of it with more sense than going in, the citizen consumer will make these companies not only pay a truly fair share for the rights to use the spectrums (and other sundry elements), from which they reap mightily, but, also, the costs to the citizen consumer for usage will be reflective of fairness and the muscles of the owners of the “airwaves/spectrums”.
Actually, me also thinks that small, perhaps regional ISP’s will serve the public, e.g., citizen-consumers, in the form of individuals and businesses.
Then again, what the hell am I thinking, unless we have an Intelligent Revolution in this country, and don’t go to war in a few years (and on and on…), and rescind many laws…-well, you get my drift.
Thank you, thank you very much.
P.S. “cable companies”, should they survive, will need to change their modus operandi, in that pushing all the channels down whatever pipe 100% of the time (well, their uptime isn’t That great), need to go to on-demand. Imagine how much bandwidth to premises can be lessened across existing copper/fiber if on-demand-only, or ala carte to a lesser, but quite significant degree, would be enabled?
Actually, I use the Web much more than Comcast to watch what I want, and read the real news, the better commentary. Like this site, although meeting that Guru guy might prove testy-or interesting.
Why not limit bandwidth of nake fun to 10 percent of what it has today. There would be no need for expansion, then.
tragically, the next scarcity crisis will be – food – and it will be the doing of the “Democrats”. The artificially induced shortages will be planned very carefully and the ensuing panic will not be wasted. More controls and restraints will be forced upon the populace. Expect this to happen very soon.
The most current scarcity is politicians who have the best interest of the United States at heart. Don’t listen to what they say; look at what they do. What is happening today was carefully planned and orchestrated in the shadows of power.