Excited about the "Exaflood"?


Last Friday, we launched a new poll at FierceTelecom.com that asked your feelings about the possibility of another bandwidth glut. We noted the unfettered optimism that has characterized carrier bandwidth investments in 2007, and here's a bit more grist for the mill: The New York Times has a story that is somewhat critical of a recent report from Nemertes Research that suggested current Internet bandwidth resources could be exhausted by 2010. This story is one of several this year that have evoked what arguably is the telecom buzzword of the year: Exaflood.

The term seems to have been coined by Bret Swanson, contributing editor to The Gilder Technology report and fellow at the Discovery Institute, in a commentary Swanson wrote for The Wall Street Journal last January.

Anyway, the Nemertes study, which I unbelievably forgot to mention in my Editor's Corner last Friday, actually fueled much of my reasoning for creating the poll. It came out just before Thanksgiving, when most of you were already in line at the airport or trying to find turkey broth at the grocery store, so maybe you missed it. You can find a link to the executive summary here.

How accurate the Nemertes study is remains to be seen, but the research and chatter about a coming exaflood could certainly fuel telco confidence to boost bandwidth investments. So, do you believe an exaflood is coming?

For more:
- read this story in The New York Times
-
here's the original commentary in The Wall Street Journal (Sub. req.)

- Dan