The main problem facing internet service providers is lack of bandwidth in relation to customer demand, according to WorldCom Inc-owned UUNet Technologies Inc. The company’s senior vice president, Pat Chapman-Pincher said at the NetEvents conference in Switzerland last week: I used to stand up five years ago and say ‘bandwidth will be free, there will be a glut of it.’ How wrong can you be? According to Chapman-Pincher, we are witnessing the birth of the ISP at the beginning of a boom in a very evolutionary market. ISPs need to be able to access bandwidth and capital, in much the same way as telecommunications companies have, if they are going to survive as anything more than niche players, the company said. But the industry is not used to demand on this scale and the surface has not been even skimmed yet in terms of internet content. According to Chapman- Pincher, the ISP market will witness the mutation of telecommunication companies into ISPs and we will see voice and data merging. Moore’s Law dictates that personal computer performance doubles every 18 months, but according to Chapman- Pincher, Internet Law predicts a doubling in performance every three to four months. While there is a bandwidth demand problem, the internet in Europe is still lagging behind the US by around two years; and Europe is soon going to have to play catch up and develop a much more complex network, if it is to cope with the increasing demand of internet bandwidth.
