A new study says massive use could overload the Internet and lead to brownouts by 2010 unless backbone service providers an estimated $137 billion in new infrastructure. The predicted ‘Exaflood’ is being attributed to video and other heavy Web content according to the70-page report by Nemertes Research Group. From the study: “Our findings indicate that although core fiber and switching/routing resources will scale nicely to support virtually any conceivable user demand, Internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will likely cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years.” Service providers already plan on spending about $72 billion on upgrades, but this report claims it’s not enough. Is this just more ‘Y2K-like’ paranoia, or is this a genuine problem? Via Macworld;Press release

Yes, being a 75-year-old old Swedish lady named Sigbritt Löthberg does have it’s benefits. One benefit would be having a 40 Gbps internet connection, letting you download full length HD-DVDs in 2 seconds or less, or enjoy 1,500 HDTV channels simultaneously. Now that’s what I call sweet. Sigbritt’s son, Peter Löthberg is part of the council that implemented the technology at her home, where she never even had a computer until now. The fiber optic network uses “a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders.” No loss of data as long as there’s fiber. Read [The Local] via CrunchGear

While reading this my first thought was “Wow. That makes you and I angry.” Then, I realized, “Oh yeah! The U.S. is always behind on all sorts of consumer level technology” (except the iPhone, yipee!). And don’t use the “size” excuse as Japan is much smaller than the U.S., we’re talking a 59.03Mbps difference in averages here, that’s ridiculous.

For those still in denial that the U.S. is lagging behind in up-to-date technology, please take another look. I mean, look at this dude who installed a 100Mbps fiber network in his neighborhood in Northern Sweden in March 2000.

Other speed demons are South Korea (median 45 megabits), France (17 megabits) and Canada (7 megabits). More [USA Today] via Digg

Swarmcast has just launched theri new ‘Autobahn’ accelerator for iTunes. According to Swarmcast, Autobahn “is a lightweight application that provides accelerated downloads and more reliable streaming video for popular applications and websites.” Basically it optimizes your incoming bandwidth but does not use any upstream bandwidth. Right now it is only for iTunes on Windows, but they say there will be support for more applications in the future.

Internet2, which is run by a consortium of more than 200 U.S. universities, said they have “sent data at 7.67-gigabits per second using standard communications protocols,” - and did 9.08Gbps 24 hours later using IPv6 protocols. The data sent started in Tokyo and went to Chicago, Amsterdam and Seattle before returning to Tokyo. The previous high of 6.96 Gbps was set in November 2005. Read [Yahoo! News]

Alcatel/Lucent has managed to shoot 25.6TB o’ data in 1 second through one fiber strand. Wow. This would allow you to successfully transmit more than 600 DVDs per second. The previous record was 14TB/second in September 2006, and according to BroadbandReports.com, “Back in 2002, the record was 2.56Tbps.” Press release
Photo courtesy of 37Hz

Here comes the Verizon FiOS Fone! And this is Verizon’s FiOS stands for Fiber Optic Service, and Verizon wants you plugged into it. They will offer a bundled or individually wrapped services of TV, broadband Internet, and VoIP telephone at speeds of 50Mbps downstream and 5Mbps upstream in some markets.

As of late, FiOS is available in select markets, see here. But, they should be rolling it out slowly to other markets within the next few years. No availability or pricing announced on the FiOS Fone, so stay tuned.

Via Gizmodo

A recent survey of 798 Internet users found that 72 percent of wireless users check e-mail at least once a day, while only 63 percent of wired broadband users do so.

The reasoning was the “relentless connectivity” that wireless offers, and this might change a person’s online behavior. However, a different reason came to my mind. That people who use WiFi are more tech savvy. And due to this,

Further backing my theory, “Wireless users are currently concentrated between 18 and 49 years of age, while the general Internet population is concentrated between 30 and 64. Wireless users also tend to be male; men accounted for 56 percent of all wireless users, but only 46 percent of all Internet users.”

Via Ars Technica

Linksys and Yahoo! have teamed up to bring us a new dual-mode cordless handheld device, the Linksys Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger with Voice aka CIT310.

Yahoo’s Senior Director of Real Time Communications, Jeff Bonforte says Yahoo! Messenger and Linksys are offering people an easy way to make and receive free internet calls from the same phone they use for their home line.

The CIT310 features a cordless DECT handset with color display, USB base station, headset jack, multi-language support, caller ID for both VoIP and PSTN (aka regular telephone line) calls, weather search, and polyphonic ring tones. Available at Amazon for $80.