Arik Hesseldahl on Verizon, FiOS and “More Bandwidth Than You Can Use?”
Arik Hesseldahl writes about Verizon’s FiOS and “More Bandwidth Than You Can Use?”
[tease]
The average cost of a megabit per second in 2002 was more than $26 a month, Cai says, and by last year it had dropped to $7. By 2010, it could drop as low as 80¢, making 50Mbps for $40 a month sound positively mainstream.
[tease]
… Much as richer Web site graphics and music downloads idled millions of dial-up modems, the smart money is betting that future online video offerings—from high-definition TV and future iterations of YouTube-type (GOOG) video-sharing sites to sophisticated online gaming and video phone calls—will turn your average U.S. home into a 50Mbps bandwidth hog within three years.
“When you start adding up how much bandwidth that the average home with a couple of teenagers might consume between 6 and 9 at night—two or three people watching HDTV shows, playing music from the Internet, playing online games—the bandwidth demands are going to be gigantic,” says Mark Wegleitner, Verizon’s chief technology officer.