Global Bandwidth Growth Reflects New Business Models, Computing Architectures, Media Types

Wide area network bandwidth used to be scarce, and therefore expensive, in the decades where the primary application requiring WAN bandwidth was voice communications. In the late 1980s, for example, the cost of WAN capacity of about 1 Mbps was significantly more than $10,000 a month. And speeds were in the kilobytes per second range. 

By 2012 costs had fallen to a few dollars a month, a difference of about four orders of magnitude. In part, we can credit Moore’s Law for the improvements. But business models and use cases also drove the demand for cheaper WAN bandwidth. `

source: Backblaze

Lead applications have changed. But so have whole business models and revenue streams. International and long distance voice used to be the profit driver for telcos. These days, mobility and internet access are the drivers. But voice never is a bandwidth hog, mobile or fixed.

As the internet has become the preferred delivery mechanism for high-bandwidth apps such as video entertainment, bandwidth requirements have shifted accordingly. The business case for streaming video does not exist without cheap bandwidth. In other words, cost for bit has to be orders of magnitude lower than previously.

With TCP/IP the global choice of "next generation platform," with the shift to cloud computing and remote storage, a shift from multicast (broadcast) to unicast content, plentiful and cheap bandwidth is the new requirement.

source: Telegeography 

At the same time, there are new locations where that demand is generated. 

These days, voice demand is paltry in relation to content bandwidth--largely video--that flows between hyperscale application provider data centers and internet points of presence where local internet service provider traffic pours onto the backbones. 

In other words, if you know the locations of the hyperscale app provider data centers, you also know the locations between which most data flows over WANs. 

source: Telegeography 

Also, it is hard to overestimate the role played by consumer content as the media type that underpins most WAN traffic need. 

source: Telegeography 

Though the role of content is not so dominant on every route, content dominates traffic moving across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and within Asia. 

source: Telegeography