The Tail Wagging the Dog

Google filed a report at the Federal Communications Commission that compares the US's telephone network (PSTN) to Internet traffic from 1997 to 2015. In 1997, the PSTN handled 54,000 terabytes (TB) per month while US Internet traffic was just 3,300 TB. Just three years later, the gap had narrowed: 66,000 TB/month for telephone vs 28,000 TB/month for Internet. By 2005, the Internet was handling 669,000 TB/month while phone traffic had fallen back to 48,000 TB/month. Five years later, phone network traffic had again fallen back -- to 36,000 TB/month while consumer IP traffic for North America had exploded to 5,723,000 TB/month. By 2015, Google predicts, telephone traffic will be around 26,000 TB/month while North American Internet traffic will be 19,415,000 TB/month.