Does anyone know about this problem?

Guy1 said:

Are there any possible solutions to this?

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FedEx ... of course!

FedEx commercial with John Moschitta - YouTube

Guy1 said:

I'll just start with the video.

Extra Credits: Spectrum Crunch - YouTube


So what is this all about?

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It's about the explosion of data transfer taking place over cellular networks. They're only designed to handle so much bandwidth and the popularity of smart phones (primarily the iPhone and iPad) have already sucked up a lot of their usable bandwidth.

Can someone explain exactly why this is a problem

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It's all Apple's fault. It all stated with their release their iPhone smart phone and they introduced the idea in internet access over cellular connections. Since then the popularity of such connectivity has skyrocketed.

It's a problem only because there's a limited amount of bandwidth currently available and too many new smart phone users coming online. On a serious note, it's actually a self inflicted wound to some degree since the cellphone companies offered unlimited bandwidth options in an effort to entice high bandwidth users. They wanted to compete with other internet companies. That's what they got. It reminds me of that saying 'Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it."

(As in why we face the problem in the first place, not why I should care)? Are there any possible solutions to this?

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I don't know of if you should care or not. If you have other options in terms of accessing the internet, the likely consequences are minimal. If however you have no other options in terms of accessing the internet and you're a big fan of interactive games or like to download movies, you're already feeling the pinch. It probably depends on whether or not you feel that your smart phone must have constant access to the internet. It's unlikely to cause a huge problem, but the supply and demand aspects are likely to drive up prices.

There are many possible potential solutions, but none of them are particularly cost effective, let alone available for immediate rollout. The solution mentioned in the video would free up more bandwidth, but it wouldn't necessarily be instantly useable to the cell phone companies.

Guy1 said:

I was asking the scientists on this forum to explain the problem in this video (If they possibly can). To rephrase the question, I'm wondering why there seems to be a total amount of bandwidth available. A possible solution would be nice too.

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We can encode information on different parts of the EM spectrum, and the government sell licenses for companies or other bodies to have parts of the spectrum 'reserved'. Check out this large (5k x 3k pixel) image for how the US allocates its bandwidth. The problem is allocation - there's just not enough bandwidth to go around.

That all said, it's not quite as simple as the video makes out, and the guy is a bit too melodramatic (in such an eventuality, there are more serious consequences than not being able to play MMORPGs). Yes, bandwidth is finite, but so is land - we may run out of land, but we can always build up. Similarly, clever encoding techniques let us reuse the same bandwidth over and over. A more immediate concern is the shortage of IP addresses, though the switch to IPv6 will sort that out. And even if we run out of encoding techniques, as the video points out, there are archaic allocations of bandwidth that can be reshuffled to free up the spectrum, or new technology to open up hitherto unavailable parts.

It's an issue, yes, but the video takes it a bit too seriously.