Spectrum Crunch - The Implications of Limited Bandwidth in 2012 - Extra Credits

[Music] hey people so today's episode is kind of an odd one it's about a problem we didn't even know existed until James ran headlong into it on a Consulting gig in some ways it's not that exciting a topic but in other ways it's really strange and kind of fascinating not to mention extremely important to gaming so what's the problem I don't know how to put this but we're running out of bandwidth in the air I know that just sounds bizarre but it's absolutely true soon there won't be enough bandwidth available in the air around us to support all of our bandwidth needs like me I'm sure many of you are wondering wait how is that possible how do you run out of capacity to transmit data over the air well as you probably know all data transfer over the airwaves comes in the form of radiation everything from the radio you hear on your car stereo to the data you transfer to browse the web on your cell phone and well there's only a limited band of wavelengths that we can use effectively to transfer information and that band can't be infinitely subdivided because of destructive interference now this used to not be an issue no one

really even thought about the total amount of band space in the air but over the last few years something happened smartphones exploded in popularity and we all started sucking down a lot more bandwidth and now that we've got tablets and a growing desire for high def media larger games and streaming content our bandwidth use is growing exponentially let me lay some stats on you the FCC says that the average smartphone uses 24 times the spectrum of an old style cell phone and that the average iPad uses a mind-blowing 122 times as much Spectrum AT&T says that their Network traffic has risen 20,000% since 2007 20,000% and according to Cisco cellular data usage is still more than doubling every year according to the FCC we are going to straight up run out of spectrum before 2014 and that's not even accounting for new technologies like the Google Glasses it's really hard to imagine but it's true after Decades of growing access to the internet faster speeds and more bandwidth and all the new technologies that come with that a tech boom that has spanned many of our entire lives we're about to run into a pretty sturdy ceiling on this thing you remember how every self phone company

used to offer unlimited internet but now it's hard to even renew such a plan much less find one if you're trying to switch carriers that's because of this spectrum crunch carriers literally can't provide us all bandwidth at the rate we want to consume it so they're driving up prices in order to try and slow down our internet consumption on these devices and that's a pretty big problem when you think about it I mean think of how much the world has been improved by our increased access to information penalizing people for using the internet chasing people away from what may be the greatest innovation of our Age stifles Technology creativity and learning that's the last thing we want to see happen that can't be our solution it's like solving a paper shortage by discouraging people from reading books but this is also a huge problem for anybody who loves games I mean games take up a lot of bandwidth any game that actually requires information to be sent real time over the Internet takes a lot of space on that spectrum and requires a consistent highquality connection to be even marginally playable this spectrum Crunch and the accompanying rise and bandwidth cost severely limits what we can do with multiplayer Mobile gaming if you were ever hoping to see a multiplayer first-person shooter for your tablet or a full 3d MMO for your phone Heck if you were even hoping to

keep playing Draw Something this limitation of available air bandwidth will pretty much put a stop to that but that's not all I mean games themselves tend to be some of the largest apps out there even just the data transfer involved in acquiring games will hamper how we do digital distribution to these devices in the future rather than the current Trend towards you simply being able to download an app wherever you are and play with your friends we are going to see an increasing move to force you to be on a wireless land if you want to get games and then of course there's cloud gaming while it may not be a big thing right now since the Kinks are still being worked out of the technology there's massive future potential in services like on live the promise that out in a warehouse somewhere they've got a ton of amazing gaming Rigs and all you have to do is subscribe to their service and their computers will do all the processing for your games all your computer will have to do is transmit your controller inputs and they'll stream you a video of the game you're playing to whatever display you're looking at theoretically with a good enough internet connection this experience will one day be indistinguishable from actually playing the game locally and while many of you probably have a hefty gaming PC and can run everything just fine on your own rig this type of technology means that so long as the machine you're on is capable of running video it could run literally

any game ever made get a Bluetooth controller and you should be able to play a crisis game on your iPad with the settings cranked all the way up grab that same controller and you can play Portal 2 on your phone on the bus ride to work but of course all that is dependent on having access to enough highquality internet access via our cellular system which means it's never going to happen unless we find an answer to the Spectrum crunch problem right now both the administration and the FCC are trying to find answers but it's a pretty tough problem just recently they passed a stop Gap Bill allowing cell carriers to broadcast data on the staticky space between television Chann channels they're also planning on taking back a lot of the bandwidth allocated to government agencies like NASA and trying to get the various companies who have bought rights but are just sitting on them to auction them off but the real problem here is that most of the really good spectrum is currently taken up by broadcast television I feel really old saying this but you remember when you used to have an antenna attached to your TV well stations like ABC NBC and fox are still broadcasting this way because they licensed the rights to those Airwaves years ago from the government and while the number of antenna users has dramatically decreased in the last two decades the amount of spectrum taken by it hasn't really and of course right

now the TV companies have no real reason to let the Spectrum go the heck it's only getting more valuable so even if their customers aren't watching via antenna anymore there's really no reason for them to let it go there's been lobbying on both sides of the issue from both the cable companies and the cell phone companies but right now it looks like unless the TV airspace gets freed up we're going to hit the Spectrum crunch long before we develop the technology to permanently solve this problem now this is the part where I would usually explain what we can do about this but unfortunately I haven't got any Grand solutions to suggest for the time being I think this is one of those esoteric and remote problems that's best solved by a broader sense of understanding all too often really important matters like this are quietly decided upon by a small group of interested parties when I think the best Solutions only come if we're all involved in the conversation so for now just think on it and discuss it with others when the opportunity pops up when somebody complains about their slow Network or the rising price of their cell phone bill maybe tell them about the bigger root problem and keep an ear out this is going to come up more and more in American politics over the next few years but it's going to come up so quietly that even a few extra voices will be able to make a huge difference hopefully with some thought we can sort this out and avoid seeing access to

wireless broadband internet being restricted I think we can all agree that would be a major step backwards thanks for watching we will see you next week [Music] oh [Music]