In a few years, the Internet in Britain may begin to issue rations.

Or not by coupon, but you can forget about unlimited round-the-clock access to the Network, and, probably, the same situation will be in other countries, not only in the UK. And this is not a scenario of a post-apocalyptic film, but simple calculations, the results of which are recently presented by specialists of the Royal Scientific Society.

The thing is that network equipment, technology consumes a lot of energy. In the same Britain, about 8% of the total energy that is generated on the Internet goes. Quantitative data are not given, but the equivalent is given in nuclear power plants. So, 8% of UK electricity is generated by three nuclear power plants. At the same time, needs are constantly growing, 8% is far from being the limit.

Access to the Network may soon be severely restricted, or generally prohibited for the broad masses of the population. Users are now consuming more and more heavy content, including HD video, and the need for this kind of content is constantly growing, doubling every four years.
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By the end of the decade, the island’s current network infrastructure will have exhausted its capabilities, and new resources, data centers, highways will be needed. According to some experts , if this continues, then by 2035 the Internet infrastructure of Britain will consume all the energy that is produced on the island.



In this case, if you expand the network infrastructure, theoretically, you can, then the UK will not be able to generate more energy. That is why the experts presented a negative scenario for the development of the Network in the region, when unlimited access to the Internet would have to be abandoned, and users would pay for what they consume, in megabytes (as was just recently). In difficult cases, access to the network will be generally closed.

Network capacity in the UK can also be increased, but for telecom operators this will be economically unprofitable. “We can expand the network by laying additional cables, but it will be economically unprofitable, plus energy consumption will rise,” commented Andrew Lord, head of optics at British Telecom.

According to the Lord, one of the most realistic solutions to this problem is not the monthly fee, but payment for the consumed traffic.

On May 11-12, the Royal Society will hold public hearings on this issue in London.