Bellsouth's chief architect, Hank Kafka made some comments in a speech recently that could possibly be a look into the near future challenges that the video explosion on the net is going to produce.
One of the points that he made was that there are an enormous amout of new devices that allow people to put video on the web and he followed right after that with comments on bandwidth not being free.
Using a slide presentation with a model that would assume all people would transfer their TV viewing to the web, he said that HD, on-demand, unicasting would cost BellSouth approximately $552 a month for each user in contrast to the current $2 a customer now.
Bryan Richard who attended the meeting said that Kafka said this "I think the solution they would like best is everyone just buy their IPTV solution and stop choking their pipes with YouTube nonsense."
In my estimation this is a weird response to say the least. He sounds like somebody that is irritated that he is being bothered with how to figure out a solution to a problem being presented to him. To put blame on customers for using a service that is being offered can't be considered a great customer service coup.
Bryan goes on to say "Again, Hank didn't have a completely clear model of what a solution would look like but he doesn't think that the current model will hold. Someone's going to have to foot the bill for this, be it video consumers, creators, or both."
I think that ole Hank just needs to go back to tinkering in the back room somewhere. What is the point of everything being reported here? For the chief architect of BellSouth to get in a public forum and say that video is going to increase bandwidth usage and that creative sites like YouTube, even though very popular with customers, is "nonsense," simply shows, as is typical of most IT types, that they have no concept of how business runs.
But as far as the scenario itself, it was silly to me. Why would a model be produced and talked about that assumes everyone will use the Internet for their TV viewing? Will that happen someday? Who knows! But broadband itself is still quite a ways from being used by the masses yet in the U.S., let alone throughout the world. I think it is better to focus on what is before us today, while we grow into the future.
Comment Preview