Verizon recently announced a new symmetric broadband service offering that should be music to the ears of any Web 2.0 business or participant. “20/20”, as the service is called, sees clearly the future of the Internet and the ever increasing levels of user participation being driven by the Web 2.0 phenomenon. And with that insight, Verizon delivers the right product at the right time to capture and drive these trends.

Users’ contributions to applications are only increasing. From the early roots of user contributed content via blogs, video and wikis to the user-contributed applications of open platforms, widgets and open source; user contributions are increasingly making their way to the very infrastructure of the applications themselves. Peer-to-peer content delivery is a great example, where users give a little in terms of idle computer cycles and broadband access, and in return they see faster and more efficient downloads. Give a little, and get a lot in return; it’s part of our social fabric and core to our value system.

Upstream capacity is the oxygen of Web 2.0 and without it participation is limited, painful or pointless. Asymmetric Internet service providers are in essence telling you that your participation is not wanted, that you cannot be a part of this growing community. But with an order of magnitude more upstream capacity than anything in the market today, FIOS instead will enable a new generation of Web 2.0 applications and a new wave of innovation on the Internet. The community has a bright future indeed.

“Asymmetric Internet connections are as useful as phones where you can only listen”. – BitTorrent Engineer for DNA and open source developer.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 7:34 am and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.