isaac Mao's Library tagged Internet →  View Popular

It's been known for well over a year that JetBlue had been planning some sort of in-flight wireless initiative. LiveTV, a division of the airline, was awarded a 1MHz air-to-ground wireless license from the FCC in June 2006, following an intense bidding war. After 120 bids, LiveTV paid $7 million for the license, which offers full coverage of the continental U.S. above 10,000 feet. Another company, AirCell, obtained a 3MHz license for $31.3 million in the same FCC auction.

Both the wireless and seat-back internet service will be provided by Airbus/SITA joint venture ONAIR. Although there is very little information available online about ONAIR, an report from late last year included a comment from ONAIR CEO George Cooper who said he had one long-haul international customer that would be offering wireless data to GSM handhelds inflight as well as wireless broadband to laptops.

• Today Cisco announced the results of the Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast and Methodology, 2008-2013 that confirms consumer broadband usage and global IP network traffic continues to climb at an overwhelming pace due to new forms and expanded usage of interactive media, and the explosion of video content across multiple devices. The study projects that global IP traffic will increase fivefold by 2013. There are key consumer and service provider implications to the forecast that compares regions around the globe including North America, Western Europe, AsiaPac, Middle East and more.

• Global IP traffic is expected to increase fivefold from 2008 to 2013, approaching 56 exabytes per month in 2013, up from approximately 9 exabytes per month in 2008.

It will initially lead to computers being disrupted and going offline for
several minutes at a time. From 2012, however, PCs and laptops are likely to
operate at a much reduced speed, rendering the internet an “unreliable toy”.

In America, telecoms companies are spending £40 billion a year upgrading
cables and supercomputers to increase capacity, while in Britain proposals
to replace copper cabling across part of the network with fibreoptic wires
would cost at least £5 billion.

We often think of the Internet as a platform for unfettered global communication, where information flows freely, innovators can launch new applications at will, and everyone can have a voice. But it’s unlikely that our children’s Internet will look anything like what we have now.

How might the Internet as we know it die? Here are 10 possibilities.