Wired News has a great piece with some fascinating data about global bandwidth trends. The title is "P2P Fuels Global Bandwidth Binge" and won't surprise anybody, but it gets more interesting. To begin with, the research companies represented in the article say that the size of the average shared file has surpassed 100MB, citing the shift from music to video. And despite RIAA president Cary Sherman's claims yesterday that file-sharing is on the decline, the research indicates that "in North America … there has been virtually no change in P2P traffic levels," despite industry crack-downs. Furthermore, the publicity created by the MPAA has actually increased P2P use in some parts of the world. Sweet irony. And in comforting news, the communications companies aren't hurting for bandwidth yet, despite the "binge", but while bandwidth cost continues to drop, that decline has begun to slow.
1. In the UK over the last 3 months legal downloads have almost matched single sales http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/blog/_archives/2005/4/12/575657.html. For the record industry to keep saying that the internet is damaging sales is crazy. Maybe what they should be doing is working out how they can turn P2P to their advantage, rather than trying to kill it.
Connected
http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk
Posted at 4:32AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Connected