A study from Nemertes Research Group suggests the increasing use of video services such as YouTube could see the internet reach breaking point in just three years’ time. The research firm says the flood of new video content could overwhelm the web by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to $137bn in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42bn to $55bn will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said.

The study is the first to "apply Moore’s Law (or something very like it) to the pace of application innovation on the Net,” the study says. “Our findings indicate that although core fibre 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."

Neowin.net