Internet 'brownouts' feared by 2010 as user traffic soars

Rising demand for bandwidth-hogging Internet activities such as swapping music files and watching YouTube videos threatens to outstrip the Web's infrastructure within three years, creating the spectre of service "brownouts" and potentially thwarting the development of the next Google-sized application, an industry-funded study warns.

Despite all the talk about the Internet's infinite possibilities, a study by U.S. firm Nemertes Research found that projected increases in Internet traffic are poised to eclipse the capacity of the Web's broadband access infrastructure – essentially the points where users "plug in" to the Internet via cable, phone or fibre optic lines –as early as 2010.

The study predicts that, in the absence of billions worth of new investments, Internet users will begin to notice a marked degradation in their online experiences within three to five years as bandwidth-heavy applications such as VoIP (Voice-over Internet Protocol), video-on-demand and various file-sharing schemes become more popular among individuals and corporations alike.

That could take the form of Web pages that take longer to load, interruptions in videos that are downloaded or streamed and stalled e-commerce transactions, said Mike Jude, a senior analyst with Nemertes. "If we don't do anything, we're going to start looking like the dying days of dial-up access," he said.