Is 50MBPS enough?

As recently as a year ago, 50MBPS sounded like a ride on a rocket based on how we interacted with the web. As we look towards the rich media net that is here now and the even richer one that is just over the horizon, it’s clear that 50MBPS will be a strained connection very soon. It’s laughable that non FTTH providers are whining about strained resources and bandwidth hogs in view of these facts. Consider this from telco trade publication Telephony Online:

To estimate the demand, various analysts have attempted to calculate a household’s future maximum peak bandwidth requirements, using an approach like this (e.g., for an IPTV triple play provider):

• Video: Each of 3 TVs is consuming a live high definition (HD) video stream, while 2 DVRs are recording 2 additional HD streams, with each stream at roughly 8 Mbps.
• Broadband: Meanwhile, the household is surfing the web—let’s allocate 10Mbps downstream and 10Mbps upstream.
• Voice: IP voice is negligible (perhaps depressing for Telephony readers, but true in this rough analysis).

So, with five 8 Mbps HD streams, plus Internet surfing and voice, the analyst would estimate 50 Mbps downstream and 10 Mbps upstream. How much more could a household ever need?

The answer is much more, when downloading files to a portable media player is considered. Let’s say you want to load your portable media player with a few HD movies (even handheld screens will look much better with HD) to watch in your car, on a friend’s TV, at the beach, etc. How long are you willing to wait to download an HD movie to your portable player? 30 seconds? 5 minutes? 2 hours?

So is 50MBPS enough? The answer is clearly no.