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The internet in 10 years time
08/10/2008 09:16 - (SA)
Arthur Goldstuck
The next 10 years in the life of the internet must be seen in the context of the last 10 years. And it's going to be less about the technology than about the people who use it.
In 1998, the number of internet users in South Africa passed the million mark for the first time, almost doubling over the previous year. Before long, it seemed, everyone would be online.
The number doubled again in the next two years, and internet nirvana appeared imminent. But then growth ground to a near-halt, and the year 2000 total of 2.4 million users will have doubled again only by the end of 2009.
This is despite the fact that we saw a revolution in access technologies in the past decade, with the slow modems of 1998 giving away to fixed line broadband in the form of ADSL and wireless broadband in flavours ranging from 3G to iBurst to WiMAX.
From a speed limit of 56kbps, which condemned you to calling up a typical online banking page in about 30 to 60 seconds or more, the speed limit for ordinary home users now is a blazing 4Mbps for ADSL and up to 7.2Mbps for 3G. In both cases, that same page appears to load instantaneously.
The result is that it is no longer about the technology we use, but rather what we do with that technology. As of 2008, despite those apparently amazing speeds, we are still severely hamstrung - or rather, bottlenecked - by the fact that we have both a speed limit and a data download limit.
The typical user has a limit or cap of either 1Gb of data or 3Gb - often hyped as allowing so many thousand pages of a book or so many hundred songs to be downloaded. The truth is that, if you regularly use some of the internet's more data-hungry applications, like Facebook or Second Life, that cap will barely last a week.
But from 2009 to 2012, the future will begin to arrive a whole lot faster. Right now, the key resource that dictates data allocation and cost in South Africa is the SAT3/SAFE undersea cable controlled by Telkom.
It provides a total of 30 Gigabits per second bandwidth to SA, and is doled out by Telkom as a precious gift.
Bandwidth will have grown
In July 2009, the new Seacom undersea cable, commissioned primarily by second network operator Neotel, will enter service. It's bandwidth capacity? 1,2 Terrabits per second, or 40 times that of the present SAT3 cable.
SAT3 is likely to be upgraded to its maximum capacity, around 320 Gigabytes per second, by 2010. And sometime between 2010 and 2012, depending on how fast Government Time catches up to real time, the new Infraco cable, initiated by the Department of Public Enterprises, will enter service with a bandwidth promise of about 3,8 Terrabytes per second.
The EASSy cable, being planned by a consortium of East African countries and telecoms players, may add another 680 Gigabit per second by then.
This means that five years from now, by 2013, our miserly 30Gbps of bandwidth will have grown to 6Tbps, or 200 times what we have now. That will have five dramatic effects:
It will bring down the cost of bandwidth to something closer to its real cost, rather than what an elite market is willing to tolerate;
It will make the current concept of data caps seem absurd, as the cost of each additional Megabyte of data comes down to fractions of a cent, rather than a few Rand;
It will speed up internet adoption as cheap bandwidth adds to the momentum of the Government's universal access policies. But don't expect the masses to flock to the use of broadband, when the infrastructure does not exist to support widespread computer access.
It will make high definition video or TV via the internet a reality, bringing down the cost of video distribution, making video-on-demand (choosing any movie you want to watch at any time) a reality, and possibly even allowing personal TV stations to come into being. An 8Mbps connection, which is likely to be fairly common by 2013, will be good enough for receiving DVD-quality video content. By 2018, we may well have speeds, probably for more affluent users, of up to 27Mbps, which is ideal for high definition (HD) video content - right now the ultimate in visual content quality.
The pace of innovation on the internet and in broadcasting will accelerate, and South Africa's competitiveness in the digital economy will rise as internet users take advantage of the fast, cheap environment to experiment, innovate and compete online.
One unforeseen (by most) consequence of all this bandwidth is that available content will mushroom even more dramatically than it has in the past decade. The information glut will become an information slum, and it will seem impossible for individuals to find their way to the best or most useful content, or at least to find their way through the useless content that will litter the internet, and possibly even TV.
The solution to this will be information mapping at a level, on a scale and with built-in intelligence such as we have never seen before. An entire industry sector will emerge around the concept of mapping information, with the likes of Google and Wikipedia eventually being seen as the forerunners, but not the owners, of that space.
Thanks to two seemingly unconnected phenomena - the growing digital divide that results from illiteracy and lack of computer literacy, and the apparent shortening attention spans of youths and young adults, devices will also evolve to take into account the need for a more visual way of interacting with information.
All screens, from phones to laptops to kiosks, will become touch screens, and all menus will be icon-based. Standards bodies will eventually decide on universal meanings for a wide range of information icons.
The cellphone will no longer be the means through which mobile networks manage their customers, but rather through which cellphone owners manage their information and communications lives, choosing which provider they will use for which purpose.
Airtime contracts will give way to data contracts that allow the user to make calls using Voice over IP, or voice over the internet, which consumes data capacity rather than airtime - since all phones will have VoIP built in, and the cost of data will have fallen far enough to make this the logical means of making calls.
At the same time, digital TV will become the primary means for the mass market to interact with information, but with a lot of help from their cellphones, which will be a more effective return path or feedback mechanism than the set-top boxes being envisaged by the Government right now.
Mass adoption of the internet
Once cellphones and digital TVs can talk to each other, in the electronic sense, both devices will come into their own as information access, sharing and transmission devices.
This combination will also allow the cellphone to come into its own as an internet access device. Right now, one needs to have a working knowledge of the internet to be able to access it on the cellphone, which why internet-enabled cellphoines are not creating a dramatic rise in internet usage by the have-nots of our society.
Digital TV will allow for an experience of a version of the internet on a large screen, which will provide the experience that can then be translated to the small screen. This means that, by 2018, we will only begin to see mass adoption of the internet in South Africa.
While the digital have-nots begin to become haves, it will just get better and better for the haves - as it has been for the past five years. One thing that will get worse is the availability of radio spectrum, which means that we will have traffic jams in the transmission of wireless broadband signals.
As the demand for data usage and speed rises, and the availability of wireless bandwidth remains static, the first moves will begin towards something called fibre to the home (FTTH), which is essentially an extremely high capacity line running into the home directly from the fibre optic networks that are being laid down in South Africa?s urban streets right now.
While telecoms operators have their hands full getting their cables in the ground in order to support data services to corporations and to keep data moving fast between the base stations that support their wireless networks, no one has time to think about FTTH.
But with the arrival not only of cheaper and faster bandwidth, but also of content that demands even faster bandwidth, FTTH looks like the only long-term solution. Expect to see business plans for FTTH emerge by 2013, and the first roll-outs to begin by 2018.
Meanwhile, due to the low cost of bandwidth, free WiFi or WIMAX hotspots will be available at most commercial hospitality or entertainment establishments, as a marketing tool or drawcard for an increasingly data-oriented society.
That will be one of the potential positive spin-offs of the 2010 World Cup, as all of Hospitality South Africa tries to find a way to attract visitors to their offerings.
But the 2010 World Cup will not transform South Africa on its own, even if it ends up taking the credit.
It will have occurred at a time when a revolution in access technologies and cost of access had already begun. The World Cup will be an early beneficiary, and may even fool us into believing that we have finally arrived in the future that the internet has allowed us to envisage for the past decade. But that future is still ten years away.
Arthur Goldstuck heads the World Wide Worx research organisation - a pioneer in the South African market in the use of the internet as a tool for productivity.
Send your comments to Arthur.
Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.
- News24
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Not 100%
08/10/2008 09:33
No mention of Internet2 or cloud computing? Those are the real talking points for the next 10 years. Hardware and data lines are all going to get faster as time goes by... we all know Moore's law but it could safely be applied to data speeds as well. The article should headlined as "Infrustructure in the next 10 years" - Brian |
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The Unexpected...
08/10/2008 09:40
I think it's more interesting to contemplate the uses we find for the Internet, or the data that moves around it.
Ten years ago, email was useful, but it's now become the standard in corporate communication. What about the current trend in social media, or interactive content: blogs, forums, commenting, etc - didn't expect that.
Besides the obvious (TV, VoIP, etc) what will we be doing _with_ the technology and infrastructure? - Brett |
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Revolution
08/10/2008 10:43
Wait till next year August for the real internet boom!Watch out for AIMS,The coming revolution for internet.... - Frans |
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internet
08/10/2008 10:46
I for one hate it.I'm not a religious zealot but firmly believe the internt is the anti-christ.Our kids have access to all manner of ansavoury material at the push of a button and often the parents,being from the older generation,don't know enough about it to adequately police it.We live in a world of hyper consumerism,hyper and often over communication and information overload hence,we are living less fullfilled lives and are dying from stress related illnesses.We have taken a step backwards. - Robin |
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Information mapping
08/10/2008 10:55
Sorting through the junk will be the big challenge in the years to come. This will happen socially - dig etc - and through experts who do the sifting for you - which is the role traditional media will have to adopt. For traditional media things like trust and credibility will become even more important than it is now, as it tries to offer a sensible interpretation of all the noise out there. - JD |
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More bandwith than 30 Gbps
08/10/2008 10:59
According to a recent article on ITWeb (http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/internet/2008/0807241130.asp), the total bandwidth capacity of the SAT3/SAFE cable is 430 Gbps (Wikipedia says 250 Gpbs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT-3), and not 30 Gbps, which means the Seacom cable of 1.2 Tbps will only have about 3 times more bandwidth than we currently have, and not 40. That's not really that much more. Is this correct? - Derik |
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Not 100%
08/10/2008 11:12
Are you being facetious or is everybody supposed to know Moore's Law. I think you are suffering with IT elitism. Explain Moore's Law to this dummy please. - Andy |
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Infrastruce
08/10/2008 11:14
?It will speed up internet adoption as cheap bandwidth adds to the momentum of the Government's universal access policies. But don't expect the masses to flock to the use of broadband, when the infrastructure does not exist to support widespread computer access?
An age old problem has also been addressed here: What about the rural communities of South Africa? It is a well known fact that the lack of communication infrastructure impedes the economical growth of a community but still the major telecommunications role players persists to provide a full range of services the rich financial viable centres of South Africa. The rural areas still have to make do with old multi-party phone systems; they have to be grateful if they have a GSM signal in a certain place close to their home. Internet access is just for the town and surrounding areas.
What is the purpose of having all these new wonderful technologies if the general public can access it?
Theo
- Theo Bosch |
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More bandwith than 30 Gbps - the truth
08/10/2008 11:37
Derik, the truth is that the current capacity is 30Gb, with a maximum potential cap of between 250 and 430Gbps, depending who is telling the story. Telkom have promised to upgrade from that 30Gbps in the next year, but right now that is the capacity until their upgrade is completed. - Arthur - Art2 |
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Not 100% - and not intended to be
08/10/2008 11:42
Brian and Brett, if you have 1000 words to tell the story, you can hardly cover all bases. It needs a book to sketch out the full picture of evolution over the next ten years. But beware of fixating on what we have right now, and on buzzphrases or vendor-driven concepts like cloud computing, virtuaisation and software as a service. It is not about the technology, but about the users of the technology and what they access with that technology that will drive the future. - Art2 |
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Information mapping
08/10/2008 11:45
JD, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Regardless of the technologies that are used, the key will be finding what you need or want. Media owners have to (partly) reinvent themselves as roadmaps or compasses. Credibility - both social and professional - will be a powerful asset. - Art2 |
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All these things....
08/10/2008 11:49
will never come to pass while Posion Ivy our Coms Minister is still alive and eating doughnuts and while Telkom is receiving protection from effective competition. - Mike |
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Infra truce?
08/10/2008 11:50
Theo is right - we don't all know Moore's Law,even those who profess to know it. The law states that "transistor density of integrated circuits doubles every 24 months" (Wikipedia) but is usually interpreted to mean that the capacity of computer processors doubles every 18 months - and the cost halves at the same time. If only this were true of data speeds, Brian! - Art2 |
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Moore's law
08/10/2008 11:53
mmm Lets see, Google google mmm. One way of using all that bandwith? - Lawaai |
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Moore's law
08/10/2008 11:59
basically Moore's law states that computing power will double every 18 months or so. Originally it was applied to processing power, indicating that the number of transistors on the processor chip would double every 18 months. Until recently it held, but soon the memory speeds of computers could not keep up and so we had to start switching to multi-core processors. Anyway, I doubt data speeds would follow the same trend. - Michael |
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Arthur...
08/10/2008 12:02
It is "tera", with one "r". - Spellcheck |
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Moore's law
08/10/2008 12:05
basically Moore's law states that computing power will double every 18 months or so. Originally it was applied to processing power, indicating that the number of transistors on the processor chip would double every 18 months. Until recently it held, but soon the memory speeds of computers could not keep up and so we had to start switching to multi-core processors. Anyway, I doubt data speeds would follow the same trend. - Michael |
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Rural areas
08/10/2008 12:17
I think Theo has a point about rural access. The only way to ensure that would be a regulatory mechanism by which a certain percentage (not much) of infrastructure development by any company has to go to designated rural areas - focussing on schools etc. We'll need a more forward-thinking coms minister for this though. - JD |
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Spam
08/10/2008 12:34
Now that is all nice, but what about spam? Spam mails are responsible for more bandwidth than normal surfing, and is getting worse every day. An archaic system, and surely can be changed? - Stef |
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Woooohoooooooooooo
08/10/2008 12:51
whatever it is, bring it on..... :-)
- Alan |
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@Art2
08/10/2008 12:55
It's not an identical match to data speeds, granted. But since 1998, lets say, we've had dial up modem (56k), ISDN (128K), first ADSL (384K, 512K), Then HSDPA came out (1.8M) then they doubled it to 3.6m and telcom also has a 4m adsl line available. We've had numerous dataspeed increases in the last 10 years so Moore's law does fit. albeit not exactly... we can still safely expect to faster access to the net available every 1.5yrs - 2yrs. - Brian & Michael |
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Moore's Law
08/10/2008 13:17
Via Google and Wikipedia one can find this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
For one who could spell facetious correctly on the first go, that's failing to use tools provided. More on the topic: This is ZA and we have a (Miss)Communication Minister hence we add 10 to 15 years to the time estimates by which time the "Internet 1" will be blazing fast only because we're the only idiots still using it whilst the rest of the is happy in Terabit speeds using The Internet (version 8.5) - Eff.Kay |
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@Brian, @Alan
08/10/2008 13:27
Can't disagree with either of you on this, and Alan sums it up best. Bring it on... - Art2 |
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Moore's law in South Africa..
08/10/2008 13:40
Moore's law as stated by Michael is relatively a good explanation, and mentioning the multi-core processors to compensate for the restrictions encountered is a brilliant example.
Communications in SA is just like that.. we have "broadband" (only just), but no affordable bandwidth due to our idiot comms minister and her (de)liberilisation policies, so Moore's law in SA should rather be called "in sy moer se law". - J Cilliers |
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Location, location, location
08/10/2008 13:44
The next set of applications (next couple of years) are all about where you are and new devices will allow you to superimpose the wealth of information in the world within the context of where you are and what you are looking at, with info superimposed on your daily life, and expect to be able to purchase immediately from wherever you are. Expect immediate delivery of media and the demise of the CD/DVD/BluRay within the next couple of years. Searches will targetted at you directly. - Interloper |
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Predictions..?
08/10/2008 13:51
Arthur Goldstuck is a hack and I have never read an original thought from him. The above predictions is a "mashup" from everyday common predictions with nothing new in it. 10 Years ago Internet was in its infancy and no-one realised at all what would happen. How can we predict what will be 10 years in the future accurately. The author should write for "Huisgenoot / You" because thats where this would be best suited... - Hack |
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But
08/10/2008 14:16
Remember, the data-intensiveness of the internet is growing all the time. In 10 years time, do you think youtube videos will still be as low quality as they are now?
We are not even keeping up with international benchmarks now, we need a BIG increase in the rate at which our internet access speed increases. And doing away with caps goes without saying (local caps are ILLEGAL anyway, Telkom just ignores the laws and Icasa does nothing). - Oom_Kosie |
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Predictions
08/10/2008 14:17
One thing about predictions on technology- they are hardly ever correct. At the rate we are advancing, in 10 years, we will be in a position far beyond what we expect. - Mark T |
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