Internet will reach its fullest capacity by 2010

AT&T, a US telecommunication company, claimed that the Internet's existing network architecture will arrive at its fullest capacity by 2010. According to the vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, Jim Cicconi: "The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today. In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today." In other words, the increasing amount of video and other user generated content will force the current Internet structure to severe slow down.

According to Cicconi just in the USA over the next 3 years $55 billion of investment will be hardly enough to rebuild and improve the internet infrastructure; and over $130 billion to do the same worldwide.  "We are going to be butting up against the physical capacity of the Internet by 2010," he said. He also mentioned that broadband traffic will increase 50 fold by 2015. "Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon, and HD is 7 to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today," Cicconi said.

With the upcoming Internet slow down, the question of web neutrality arises. Which content will receive priority over the rest? Content creators disagree on the issue of consumer protection and equality of Internet traffic. Service providers argue over the Internet being unequal and such traffic as VoIP getting prioritization by default.