LONDON: A 50-fold increase in speeds over the last decade and the rise of high-definition streaming has seen the country’s data usage skyrocket. If current trends continue, without spending huge amounts on installing extra capacity, the existing fibre optic networks which connect the UK to the rest of the world could be full within a decade.
Leading engineers and physicists will be meeting with telecommunications companies at London’s Royal Society later this month to figure out how to prevent this from happening, British newspapers reported at the weekend.
“We have done very well for many years to keep ahead, but we are getting to that point where we can’t keep going for ever,” Professor Ellis of Aston University in Birmingham said.
“Unless we come forward with really radical ideas, we are going to see costs dramatically increase.”
Prof Ellis says research in the lab normally leads commercial deployment by about eight years, and scientists are now struggling to fit any more information into fibre optic cables.
New Zealand is dependent on the Southern Cross Cable network for its connection to the rest of the world. Technology commentator Paul Spain says because we have a much smaller population than the UK, we don’t face quite the same risk of running out of capacity here but without a backup, we are at the mercy of Mother Nature and terrorist attacks aimed at our infrastructure.
“There is some risk there to our country around what happens in an earthquake-type situation or a terrorist situation if those were pulled up, it could take weeks to get New Zealand reconnected to the internet. For us, that’s where the real risk is.”
Mr Spain is confident whatever difficulties the UK faces in keeping up with demand, engineers should be able to come up with a fix that doesn’t involve capping usage or dramatically raising costs.
“They’re talking about an issue that’s eight years away, and I guess at any point if we stopped development in internet-related technologies and just left everything how it was, in about eight to 10 years we would be right royally stuffed.”
Andrew Lord, head of optical research at British Telecom, is also confident a solution can be found, suggesting storing data in server farms rather than constantly transferring it. But this comes with its own set of problems server farms use massive amounts of electricity.
At current growth rates, it’s estimated the internet could use up the entire output of the British power grid by 2035.
Mr Spain doubts that’s a realistic prediction, because server farms don’t need to be located in the UK.
“It’s possible to put those systems in different locations where power is maybe cheaper or it’s more effective.”
Facebook, for example, has servers in northern Sweden where it’s naturally cold reducing the need for power-hungry cooling systems.
