h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The age of aquarius will end and everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about.

Flares and platform soles will go back out of fashion (phew!)

There will be a new SF series set in space with lots of state of the art computer graphics which will look stale by the end of the second series and still no-one will be able to tell the deference between an alien and a muppet or a human with a bad skin day.

The first nano-bot will have the computing power of a ZX Spectrum and only be able to play a tennis game - badly.

Windows 2002 will be released (in 2003) with the new feature of automatically putting you on a credit blacklist if you try to uninstall any part of it, or try to install a non-MS office suite over it. The US State department will complain, but Bill Gates will buy the election in 2004 and abolish anti-trust laws.

That's all for now

Are you certain about that?

I could be wrong, yes.
Damn, now everyone will laugh at me!

I wouldn't be so (snigger, snigger) rude!

I predict that BT will bring in a free connection to the internet during the off peak hours within the next year. A flat fee tarrif is probablly on the way in maybe 2002/2003

Let's not get silly, now... *grin*

Actually, I don't think it's possible to predict in which direction internet connections will move... BT are making an absolute fortune out of internet dialups at the moment, enough to (allegedly) encourage them to delay ADSL and other, far far better, technologies...

What I would *like* to see is reasonably fast - over 100k/s - internet connections being widely available... whether or not this will happen in the next few years is debatable...

What I would *really* like to see is fast - one or 2 Mb/s - links becoming widely available over the next few years... however, I happen to know that a certain internet company currently charges around a quarter of a million pounds every year for such a connection.

It's my prediction and I sticking to it, silly or not
They have already changed things if you use some of thier ISP'S.
I.E. BT Click. But there are too many people leaving BT not to make them come up with an insentive to stay connected, The Type of connectiion you mention is only used by companies whereas the domestic user pays more for the line rental than the calls. Therefore this is a revenue they do not want to lose. Imagine the amount of money they will lose to the phone company's that are offering free connection. The average person isn't like you, they don't know about the high speed connections. I predict that will be in about 4 years time when there new computers (the one they bought in 1999) start to pack up, The average person has a PC with a 56k modem and if they can connect for free they will (me being one of them)Ok you can say Oh but you could install an ISDN modem but the mojority of userers cant work out how to add a mail account let alone intstall a new modem

Remember this is only a prediction and like all predictions I am probablly wrong.

Ahh, you're right, there is some degree of competition... I connect to the internet via Cable & Wireless, largely because I needed a second phone line due to my parents' complains and a C&W line seemed line a good choice...

Free connection is already something of a reality - you're always hearing about new services which offer free off-peak calls or whatever, but there always seems to be some catch... I use BT internet somethingorother which gives me free dial-up at the weekends but costs £11.50 a month, and is fairly slow to boot.

When it comes down to it, I just don't like paying extortionate amounts every month for years-old technology...

Still, I can agree that things are likely to get somewhat better, if gradually. Companies'll take their turns to try and out-compete each other - and eventually it'll actually be reasonable value. Whether it'll ever be reasonable speed... I don't know.

Still, it's not my place to be ridiculously over-pessimistic. The only way is up! Long live the internet! Etc, etc...

Well, I predict that BT will make massive profits and support any scheme (the above included?) that will increase said profits. Oh yeah, and their customer support will improve. (It could get worse, but probability says not.)
Signed: Managing Director, BT

How about £1470/month for 2Mb/s connection - always on - not £1/4m pa.

This price will continue to come down and will be in the range of £250-£500/month by 2002 - if we ever get that far....

By which point we will want Gb speeds as the junk on the Inet will take up so much more bandwidth.

Ahh, I've just checked back, I think that may have been the price for 45Mb per second. The company (U-Net) are't publishing their prices on the web anymore, so I can't be sure.

£250 per month... hmmm... I can see *some* internet freaks paying that. For an always-on connection... it would actually be comparable to a dial-up service, if you can make use of it during the day. And, of course, it would be a good thousand times faster...

I can't wait

Sat internet. Don't let the price of putting these birds in the sky fool you. Iridium already has 66 birds in medium orbit and their competitors begin launching their birds in Jan to accomodate various forms of digital data. The price of all services will come down. BTW, several sat internet companies are traded on NASDAQ (hint, hint).

Thanks for the tip I will go buy buy buy now.

I may be wrong (heaven forbid!), but the last I heard, Iridium was having problems with people taking... ah... interest in their phones.

Not that I don't think it's a good tech, mind you! Who wouldn't want to be contacted anywhere, anytime? Form a line, please!

Nope, you're not wrong - Iridium have declared themselves bankrupt. The cost of launching the satellites along with the relatively few numbers of new subscribers meant they just couldn't stay solvent...

Motorola won't let this die. Watch and see. They've got too much invested. Whether it's Iridium or another, it will happen.

Strider

Not yet though...

Looks like my Prediction about Internet Bandwidth prices wasn't quite right... If anything its even cheaper....

Home Bandwidth at £25 for 600kb/s...

Business Bandwidth... Hmm closest I can get to my Figure of £500/month is what I've just set up at work......

£6000/year for a cabinet in a Co-lo facility including 2MB internet feed....

Except we concatenated 5 cabinets worth into one and got 10Mb/s for about £30000/year...