What Happens When Everyone's Using Video All The Time?

Discussions surrounding how much bandwidth we need are missing the point by striving to list all the different types of applications people use.

The question we should be asking is simple: how much bandwidth do we need to support a future where everyone's using video all the time?

Let's unpack that question a bit.

First off, video applications are what drive most demand for bandwidth. And the higher a video's resolution, the more bandwidth it needs.

Secondly, video applications include a whole lot more than just watching YouTube, Hulu, and porn, encompassing everything from videocalls to video security to webcasting video of yourself to the world.

Someday in the not too distant future we're all going to be using high-resolution video applications all the time: to talk to friends and family, to communicate with doctors and teachers, to conduct business, to see what's happening in the world, to learn and to teach, and, of course, to be entertained.

We're going to be spending hours online every day using high-resolution video applications.

Or at least we're all going to be wanting to use them, assuming we have enough bandwidth in our broadband for the apps to actually work.

To support the possibilities of a world where high-resolution, two-way video is ubiquitous, we need broadband networks with the capacity, symmetrical speeds, scalability, reliability, and low latency to support high-quality high-resolution two-way video all the time, even if everyone's using it.

We need networks that can deliver the speeds they promise, and we needs speeds starting at 100Mbps and going up from there in order to handle the traffic from multiple users online at the same address at the same time.

We cannot forget that the next-generation of the Internet is not about webpage and email, it's all about video. And as we continue to adopt more and more high-resolution video applications, we can't afford to have networks that deal in bandwidth scarcity, that can't offer lots of upstream capacity, and that can't support lots of simultaneous usage.

That's why I'm a believer in fiber as it's the only broadband technology that welcomes a future of ubiquitous, always-on, high-resolution, two-way video and that has the capacity to support whatever demands we throw at it.