World Broadband Lines in active use will reach 350 Million in 2008, and rise to 470 Million by 2010. Of equal significance, the Impact of Computing ensures that the cost of network bandwidth continues to drop exponentially, and thus the average speed of each Broadband line is also increasing by as much as 30% a year.
As both the number and the average speed of lines are increasing simultaneously, this combined growth enables continued Internet evolution to occur much faster than most observers are expecting. Technological changes often take observers by surprise because they are fixated on just one advancing trend, while failing to notice another trend on a rapid collision course with the first.
Web 2.0 emerged a mere half-decade after the Internet bust (2000-02) due to the simultaneous combination of greater Internet connection speeds and wider Broadband penetration, leading to a greater number of people each spending more time online. The total aggregate person-hours spent on the Internet grew dramatically, enabling new business models to sustainably exist.
Thus, early in the next decade, the greater number of Broadband users, each with access to much higher speeds than today, will create an ecosystem that can sustain new Internet business models that may seem premature today. This will eventually be defined as 'Web 3.0', which could include technologies known today under the term of 'Semantic Web'.
Be watchful of the companies that could become to Web 3.0 what YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. were to Web 2.0.
