"In seven to ten years video traffic on the Internet will exceed data and voice traffic combined"
About this Quote
Metcalfe’s prediction lands with the quiet audacity of someone who helped build the network and is now betting on what humans will actually do with it. The line isn’t really about bandwidth accounting; it’s about the Internet’s evolution from a utilitarian pipe for messages and files into a mass medium that behaves more like television than telephony. By pairing “video” against “data and voice combined,” he frames video as the gravitational force that will reorganize everything else: infrastructure, business models, even social habits.
The specific intent is strategic: alert engineers, investors, and policymakers that the network’s future load won’t be email or VoIP elegance but messy, continuous, high-volume streams. “Seven to ten years” is a classic forecasting window: close enough to provoke planning, far enough to sound visionary. It’s also a nudge toward a particular kind of build-out - faster last-mile connections, better compression, content delivery networks, and later, mobile optimization.
The subtext is cultural. Video is not just another file type; it’s attention at scale. If the dominant unit of online exchange becomes moving images, power shifts to platforms that can host, recommend, and monetize them - and to advertisers who can buy proximity to that attention. Voice starts to look like a feature, data like a substrate, while video becomes the “front door” of the web.
Context matters: Metcalfe is famous for Metcalfe’s Law, the idea that networks gain value as they gain users. Video supercharges that logic by making participation frictionless: you don’t need expertise to watch, and watching is contagious. The Internet stops being a tool you use and becomes a place you live.
The specific intent is strategic: alert engineers, investors, and policymakers that the network’s future load won’t be email or VoIP elegance but messy, continuous, high-volume streams. “Seven to ten years” is a classic forecasting window: close enough to provoke planning, far enough to sound visionary. It’s also a nudge toward a particular kind of build-out - faster last-mile connections, better compression, content delivery networks, and later, mobile optimization.
The subtext is cultural. Video is not just another file type; it’s attention at scale. If the dominant unit of online exchange becomes moving images, power shifts to platforms that can host, recommend, and monetize them - and to advertisers who can buy proximity to that attention. Voice starts to look like a feature, data like a substrate, while video becomes the “front door” of the web.
Context matters: Metcalfe is famous for Metcalfe’s Law, the idea that networks gain value as they gain users. Video supercharges that logic by making participation frictionless: you don’t need expertise to watch, and watching is contagious. The Internet stops being a tool you use and becomes a place you live.
Quote Details
| Topic | Internet |
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