The spread of 28.8 Kbps modems, ISDN installations, video- and teleconferencing, graphics-intense Web surfing, tens of thousands of Internet users participating in voice chat, voice-enhanced games, and all-day open phone links between friends suggests that several seasons of Net gridlock lie ahead.
Predictor: Hapgood, Fred
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Fred Hapgood covers the issues surrounding Internet telephony. Hapgood writes: ”The size of the ‘potential’ leak in the tire of conventional voice revenues … is dependent on three factors – all of them unpredictable. The first is how willing users will be to trade reduced reliability and sound quality for price. We should know the answer to this toward the end of the year, when some commercial Web sites should be offering users the choice of connecting to their sales and customer service departments using either a conventional phone or one over the Internet. The second factor is Net bandwidth – not end-user or access-provider bandwidth, but backbone or service-provider bandwidth, available at network exchange points. Will it increase with demand or simply choke? On one hand, the Net is awash in investment, and the technology required to increase Net capacity up to tenfold (for instance, by replacing 1.5 Mbps T-1 technology with 45 Mbps T-3 connections) is well understood and widely available. On the other hand, the spread of 28.8 Kbps modems, ISDN installations, video- and teleconferencing, graphics-intense Web surfing, tens of thousands of Internet users participating in voice chat, voice-enhanced games, and all-day open phone links between friends suggests that several seasons of Net gridlock lie ahead. The third factor affecting voice revenues is how fast the technology improves, including the penetration of support technologies like faster modems, ISDN lines, the redesign of corporate security systems to transfer telephony packets, and better speech compressors and telephony-optimized sound-card drivers. These developments should go hand in hand with the routine incorporation of telephony into signal-processing chips, multimedia computers, sound cards, modems, and browsers.”
Biography:Fred Hapgood took on the role of moderator of the Nanosystems Interest Group at MIT and wrote a number of articles for Wired and other tech publications of the early 1990s. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Bandwidth
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: IPhone: Will Telephony on the Net Bring the Telcos to Their Knees? Or Will it Allow Them to Take Over the Internet? (And, Oh, Yes, It’s Damn Hard to Tap)
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/iphone_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney