Accelerating Technology: The Pace of Transmission Systems

The growths in capacity of various generations of transmission technology were studied. The results show that the growth rates for different transmission technologies are themselves increasing, which means that the pace of transmission technology is accelerating. What is somewhat surprising is that long-distance rates are not decreasing more steeply. What is not surprising is the bandwidth glut in backbone networks. However, the increasing availability of transmission capacity in the bandwidth-rich world of the future could herald a return to circuit switching for data telecommunication.