Reflections on DEMOfall 07
In the afterglow of DEMOfall 07, I’ve been thinking about an interesting trend in the types of innovation we’re seeing related to networks. At last winter’s DEMO 07, the “favorite” demonstrations were applications that required tremendous bandwidth and/or QoS from their supporting networks (e.g., Total Immersion, eJamming, etc.). Conversely, at last week’s DEMOfall 07, the “highlights” were demonstrations focused on addressing the bandwidth limitations of networks (e.g., Digital Fountain, Global Communications, etc.). If we take the DEMO conferences as windows into where the best brains (and money) are focused, it seems as though innovators have turned their attention from taking advantage of “limitless” bandwidth to fixing the real problems of bandwidth constraints. So our question of the day (or week) is, who is going to fix the bandwidth problem first - the carriers themselves or the supporting ecosystem? What do you think?
