Bergkamp10 writes "Consumer and combined use of the the net* could handicap the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, by the numbers to a new study. A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Net by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to US $137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, gospel to the study by Nemertes scrutiny Group. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said. Quoting from the study: 'Our findings indicate that albeit core fiber and switching/routing resources will scale nicely to support close to any conceivable user demand, the web* access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will likely cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years.' arpanet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year."

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