Internet service providers will move away from the model where you pay only for a limit on the peak rate you can send no matter how far. They will be moving toward pricing that better covers underlying costs – time, distance, traffic, bandwidth. Like PC memory, Internet bandwidth is getting cheap fast, but it will never be free in the quantities it’s needed.
Predictor: Metcalfe, Robert
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for InfoWorld, Internet pioneer and Ethernet creator Bob Metcalfe writes: ”The Next Generation Internet will take a whole different approach to money. I continue to predict that Internet service providers will move away from the model where you pay only for a limit on the peak rate you can send no matter how far. They will be moving toward pricing that better covers underlying costs – time, distance, traffic, bandwidth. Like PC memory, Internet bandwidth is getting cheap fast, but it will never be free in the quantities it’s needed.”
Biography:Robert Metcalfe developed Ethernet technology at Xerox PARC in 1973 and later developed the networking company 3Comm. He is known for making the exaggerated 1995 prediction that due to an expected overload as people tried to connect, the Internet would “go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” He later jokingly ate his words, pureeing a paper copy of the article including this comment and swallowing it before a group of onlookers. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: December 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Cost/Pricing
Name of publication: InfoWorld
Title, headline, chapter name: Online Services in for Small Change on the Next Generation Internet
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/metcalfe/bm122595.htm
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Pinkerton, Bradley Steven