You ever noticed that whenever somebody gets something for free, they have a tendency to take that gift for granted?
This is something most of us are guilty of, myself included…
But there’s something about “free stuff” that tends to bring out the worst in people – and no where is that idea more prevalent than in the ONE thing that many of us seem to take for granted…
The internet.
Many of us depend on the World Wide Web for our daily activities, such as banking, communication and, in more and more cases, their place of employment…
But have you ever thought about what would happen if the entire thing got shut down?
A scary scenario I know…
But according to Canadian tech magazine, MarketNewsGadgetTalk, this is a scenario that could be very likely to happen within the next three to five years.
In the article, they reference Nemertes Research, and how the company foresees Internet “brownouts”, slower-paced services, and difficulty in accessing specific content.
The reason?
Well, with the growing popularity of bandwidth-heavy content, like streaming videos and music downloading; as well as the increased use of the Internet on portable devices, like mobile phones and tablets, the toll 100% free access exacts is about to be felt in a big way…
“The Internet is inherently self-protecting,” says the company’s President and senior founding partner Johna Till Johnson. “You can’t push more traffic onto the ‘net than it can handle.”
The company compares this sort of scenario to that of an open highway and busy local roads…
“If the freeway is empty but local roads are congested,” the firm explains, “users will spend most of their time stuck in traffic at the edges.”
That means that instantaneous logins we’ve become so accustomed to could become a thing of the past…
Replaced instead with having to wait long periods for our “opening in traffic” in order to get us onto the information super highway.
But what can we do to stop this shut down?
Well, Nemertes claims that the industry as a whole needs to invest 60-70% more on broadband access capacity like cloud computing than initially planned (Just over $100 Billion). Because if we don’t…
Nemertes predicts the Internet’s capacity will not be able to support user demand.
Something scary to think about…
But who’s supposed to shoulder this cost?
I mean, the internet is free…
Nobody owns it. So whose responsibility is it to cover the costs?
I guess we’ll find out…
Anyway, just some food for thought. I hope that since you’re logged on reading this, you’ll think about the possibilities of losing out on having the freedom to do so again.
Because it’s becoming a very real possibility.
Regards,
Ethan Warrick
Editor
Wealth Authority
