Bandwidth crunch to squeeze carriers

Online customers already frustrated by the lack of choice in either their supplier or available content have a new issue to contend with: degrading levels of service. That's because the cable TV and phone industries are approaching a crisis in available bandwidth, thanks to growing demand for things like HDTV and online gaming …

[Anonymous Coward]

How can this be true?

Everyone knows that there's no demand for bandwidth - but even if there was, "it's more common than running water in this country". BT says so, so it must be true. But how depressing to read of more investment in interim/obsolescent/inadequate technologies in the access network. Too little, too late. Those countries that have already made the decision to deploy universal FTTH must feel pretty smug at all this. It will now take us 5 years or so to catch up, even if we make the decision to start now.

[Dillon Pyron]

Meanwhile

At the very same time the carriers are whining (this is the US, not the UK where it would be whinging), they are getting ready to roll out their very own IPTV product. Which the other content providers will graciously subsidize.

Cynical? Naw, it's pouring here (Tropical Storm Erin came in about 5 minutes before I left the house) and I'm soaked to the knees, wearing wet shoes and sitting over an air vent.