I try to save as much Internet bandwidth as I can – particularly at work, where I’m not paying for it, and every needless byte counts against the bottom line.  When I’m replying to an e-mail, I don’t waste people’s time by quoting the entire original message and lazily sticking my two-word reply on the top – I edit everything down to the absolute bare minimum.  If a reply comes back to me with more than two original messages hanging off it, I don’t even bother reading it.  And I don’t spend my time sending funny videos to everyone in my address book. It’s kind of like driving a hybrid vehicle while everyone else on the block is driving a Hummer.

But if a study from ABI Research has any merit, it’s probably time for all of us to consider not just our carbon footprint, but our bandwidth imprint as well.  They say that unless the Net gets a bandwidth boost, it’s in danger of crashing.  

American video websites now transmit more data in one month than the entire amount of traffic on the entire Internet for all of the year 2000, and file-sharing makes up a third of that.  Networking outfit Cisco Systems predicts that video streaming and downloads will increase to account for 30 percent of consumer traffic by 2011 – last year that figure was 9 percent.  In the UK, the BBC has released its iPlayer online TV system, which, compared to YouTube, has downloads that are 10 times as long and use 30 times the bandwidth.  

Once we get a few million more people on the net swapping and streaming enormous high definition video files, those sites that seem to take forever to load today – MySpace, anyone? – might not load at all.  Although, according to some, that might not be a bad thing.  I’d kinda like to receive my important e-mails in less than 24 hours, though.  

Read more at IT News Australia.