Streaming

Back in the 1990's, I predicted that all data-oriented utilities — telephone, television, radio, etc. — would eventually become Internet services. Today, the world is rapidly approaching this ideal as people ditch their POTS telephone lines for VoIP and their cable television subscriptions for streaming video. This disruptive technology has created tension in the industry as old-school telecommunications companies cling to their non-Internet services out of fear of their infrastructure turning into “dumb pipes,” while other companies are lining up to provide services over the Internet. Discussion of this disruption usually turns to the subject of bandwidth — the measure of the telecommunications infrastructure's capacity to deliver these services to users.