Search

This paper describes the analysis of the evolution of Internet service access for the residential sector with the purpose of obtaining an expression to make predictions about its increase over the next ten years. The models derived from a traditional industrial economy are no longer valid to calculate the evolution of Internet service access. As such, the authors of this paper propose and test a new model to calculate the increase in the percentage of Internet users based on the concepts of a network economy. The new model, combined with the tendency of modem speed evolution, produces a new equation to calculate the bandwidth growth in optical access networks. This way of calculating the bandwidth growth of the access networks is independent of the authors' knowledge of future Internet services. Application of the model to a simulated geographical area is shown. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]