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Last summer a Senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, fumbled through his description of the Internet as a “series of tubes.” His simplification was a clumsy adaptation to what telecom folks colorfully refer as “pipes”, network bandwidth such as fiber optical cables providing faster transmission speeds and therefore a “fat pipe.” In 3 to 5 years IBM promises we will have much, much fatter pipes. (Link to full story.)

“We have worked out a way to ship almost inconceivable quantities of data at extremely low power,” said Bernie Meyerson, chief technologist for International Business Machines Corp.IBM optical chip

Imagine 160 Gigabytes of data or an entire HD movie being downloaded to your computer or DVR box in one second! The implications of this new chip are staggering. Codecs, audio and video compression technologies, such as MPEG used in mp3, DivX and all the rest will no longer be necessary. Larger hard drives and bigger memory storage devices to collection your new tidal wave of data will be necessary. Online video web sites will contain larger, higher resolution clips which will certainly compete with traditional television broadcasting stations to a larger extent than they do now. Peer-to-peer networking schemes will be more important for sharing vast storage resources than bandwidth itself. Networked games will become higher resolution and more interactive. I can imagine two remotely located Nintendo Wii users playing a lifesized game of tennis through the network. My mind is on fire with ideas, get me a VC quick!

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