Cable Companies Facing Bandwidth Crunch

[mandy]

With an ever greater amount of video being consumed online, many Internet users are in for a shock. There’s a dirty little secret in the broadband industry: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don’t have the capacity to deliver the bandwidth that they claim to offer. One way ISPs attempt to conceal this problem is to place a cap of say 1GB per-month per user, something which is common in the UK for many of the lower-cost broadband packages on the market. Considering that a mere three hours viewing of Joost (the new online video service from the founders of Skype — see our review) would all but use up this monthly allowance, it’s clear that lots of Internet users aren’t invited to the party...

full article: http://www.last100.com/2007/05/28/will-i...deo-party/

[mandy]

A related article:

If you're starting to become frustrated with the download speed of your cable ISP or the relatively low number of HD channels available, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Your local cable provider will soon be faced with a serious bandwidth crunch, according to a new report released by ABI Research. The problem comes from more demanding applications, including high-definition video, video on demand, online gaming, and higher-bandwidth Internet applications. The result? Big problems—like fewer HD channels and sputtering download speeds—if the industry doesn't respond to the challenges in front of it...

full article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/200...runch.html