Back in 2001 I gave a presentation at a broadband conference where I made the then-bold assertion that each household would need a minimum of 100 MB of undiminishable (ie not shared) bandwidth. I remember at this same conference that another speaker who was attached to slow DSL speeds made fun of me saying essentially that there was no need for 100MB of bandwidth to every home – he asserted that DSL( then 1.5MB tops) was as fast as anyone would need. Well it feels good to be right and just about a decade ahead of my time. Google is now imagining ultra high speed networks to the home and the FCC is proposing its “100 squared initiative” – 100 million homes with 100 MB of service. In order to stay ahead of the curve, I can now foresee the need for 10GB of service to the home in the next 20 years. It takes a lot to do a hologram even with good compression….
This is a link to my original 2001 presentation. Towards the end you will see a couple of slides where I calculate what I think the then-foreseeable need for 100MB might be: https://medialawprofessor.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/broadband-presentation-morris1.ppt
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