Nortel CTO: Video On The Net could break the Internet – That’s Laughable

Online video is not taxing the Internet. Anyone in the industry that deals with content delivery knows first-hand that while there is more demand for and consumption of video, traffic on the Internet is not being broken by video. Some of these network operators, who don’t actually deliver content but rather sell or lease pipe, talk as if the Internet is in danger of crashing due to video.

Nortel’s CTO John Roese told Reuters "Soaring demand for games, video and music will stretch the Internet to its limits" and Nortel expects service providers will make big investments in its technology to avoid a crunch.

The second part is true. Networks are making investments in servers and bandwidth to increases their capacity to be able to handle the delivery of video. But speak to any of the content delivery networks today, and they will all tell you that adding capacity is not an issue. Most of them currently have somewhere in the range of 30% of their current network un-utilized, a common practice in the space to allow for surges in traffic.

What do you think could be the biggest factors that would slow the growth of online video consumption?