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.

Because of the dramatic reduction in servers and bandwidth required for distributing content with P2P technology, I recently made the claim that P2P technologies could be likened to hybrid cars and that BitTorrent is the Toyota Prius. Then I read this article about all of the externalities involved in manufacturing hybrid cars. Whoops! (?)… here are some statements and interesting data points:

“Toyota’s Prius [is] a compact hybrid that’s beloved by ardent environmentalists and that fetches premium prices because it gets nearly 50 miles-per-gallon in combined highway/city driving…”

“Released last December, [a] study tabulated all data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from drawing board to junkyard, including such items as plant-to-dealer fuel costs, distances driven, electricity usage per pound of material in each vehicle, and hundreds of other variables.”

And because of the process to make the batteries required to run a hybrid: “The Prius registered an energy-cost average of $3.25 per mile driven over its expected life span of 100,000 miles. Ironically, a Hummer, the brooding giant that has become the bête noir of the green movement, did much better, with an energy-cost average of $1.95 over its expected life span of 300,000 miles.”

Yikes! Maybe hybrids just provide the “feel good value” of 50 mpg. On the other hand, BitTorrent gives you all the good vibes *plus* dramatically better efficiency vs. centralized infrastructure…. to the tune of 60-90% reduction in the number of central servers needed to serve a video or software download!