Skype has announced a new record of 25 million concurrent users, meaning 25 million voice and video calls simultaneously. It also means that all those Skype users are NOT using their cellphones or land lines to make voice calls. Skype video works extremely well if you have a good Web camera (good means you ought to spend at least $50-$75) and a decent Internet connection; if you have tried Skype video and found it fuzzy or blurry, it's probably your camera. The tiny cameras that come in laptop lids tend to have very poor quality compared to a good USB camera. But I digress. Those video calls that Skype users are making are stressing out the "entertainment" networks provided by the cable and phone companies. I put "entertainment" in quotes because years ago, when I was working out of the home and suffered a cable modem network outage, I was told that the cable modem service I was subscribed to was an "entertainment" service, not a business service, and it might take up to two weeks to repair the outage.
Today's cable and DSL networks were not designed to support symmetric bandwidth, which is what you need if you are going to do voice and video calls--especially if you are trying to do video calls.
But wait, I've saved the best for last. Think just a few geeks are using the Skype video service? You'd be wrong, because Skype says 40% of their calls in the first half of 2010 were video, not voice. Ruh-roh, as Scooby Doo would say, or perhaps the cable companies and phone companies are saying..."Ruh-roh...our networks are glowing cherry red, we can't supply the bandwidth, we have an antiquated network and a 1950s business model." This is going to become a national disaster before it is over, because the economic development plans of many communities are going to be disrupted over lack of decent bandwidth to run a business.
The communities that are building their own open access networks will have complete control of their economic future. If your community's essential infrastructure for attracting and retaining businesses depends on the cable and phone companies, you might want to practice saying, "Ruh-roh."