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With apologies to REM, the rumors and alarmists are cautioning the industry that the internet may be in for tough times.  Ranging from a complete melt-down to ultra-sluggish performance, it is said bandwidth issues are going to be a problem in the near future.  How soon?  They say 2011 is when demand will outpace our current bandwidth capacity.

Everyone points the finger at YouTube.  With its video content, it is monopolizing what is traversing through the tubes.  From the New York Times,

Tim Pozar, an engineer and a co-owner of the Internet services company UnitedLayer in San Francisco, said a number of forces were combining: the surge in bandwidth-hungry video applications on Web sites, the need to handle traffic from more Internet-enabled devices like cellphones, and shortages of electrical power for data centers in places like San Francisco.

What does that mean to me?  An all out shutdown would mean the end of my jobs.  Communications would face a major setback and these fun things called blogs get wiped out.  But I don’t think it will come to that.

At worst, some experts say programs that require heavy Internet lifting will become sluggish.  They say some tasks just won’t be possible in a bandwidth-strapped world.

Why do I feel fine?  It isn’t just the ostrich maneuver of burying my head in the sand and pretend as if there is no problem; it is my confidence in the tech sector to find new solutions.  Whether it is stripped down websites to accommodate clogged tubes or better compression formulas or a smarter way to do business, the net will adapt.  Look at websites optimized for the iPhone; here many sites built device-specific versions of their sites to deliver the critical information.  And they are awesome, many of the sites I prefer on the iPhone vs. the full blown version.

Are we headed for a crash?  Nah, but I am an optimist.

Read [New York Times]