If you stick with the bridge analogy where the fast pass drivers are more stuck than the rest, you can imagine ways around that; a second raised lane that stacks a second fast pass lane above the first, or maybe one above and below, effectively widening the traffic throughput without effecting the non-fast pass traffic.

The way that might work with data is if there was a second network that was reserved as an overflow carrier. Anyone who paid the fast pass fee would get bumped over there at peak times when their data throughput rates reached a low enough level. (Maybe a better analogy in this case is the gears on an automatic transmission; when the car revs up high enough, it kicks into a different gear.)

But this makes me wonder about Bram Cohen’s latest goal to “kill off television.” As I understand it, he’s trying to design torrent-based infrastructure where digital television is sent directly to your box via torrent, rather than directly from the networks, and the more people watching a show the faster you get it.

Could some similar kind of infrastructure be implemented for wireless data? I know it works for television because everyone’s getting and sharing the same bits, and no one is having the same wireless conversation. But there must be some duplication in wireless — web browsing, games, streaming, etc. If that kind of data could be shunted over into some kind of torrent-like network, where each wireless user was also sharing back some of the data being accessed to others nearby, would that help lighten the overal load?

Why do we limit our expectations from carriers to responding to the explosion in wireless data usage by simply adding more infrastructure? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an Apple in that industry, that had a visionary leader, who was forward thinking, and decided to innovate instead of just react. Imagine if they spent a portion of their profits on R&D, and bringing to market breakthroughs out of the labs we hear about.

Like the one of Stanford that could double wireless bandwidth:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/18/stanford-gurus-enable-two-way-radio-communications-over/

And then Rice University:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/06/researchers-demo-full-duplex-wireless-double-the-throughput-wit/

Whether it’s the content industry or the communication network carriers, I’m convinced the answer is always innovation. And I think it’s time we start expecting it more and more from these legacy industries.

ON the more philosophical side, I really don’t think the fastpass model would create haves and have nots. right now we just have little and have less. This model would at least allow some haves. And price inflation usually ends up being self-corrected IMHO.

Thanks for the thoughts!

Perhaps a better idea would be to come up with a feedback loop to the user showing current network congestion, similar to how signal strength is supposed to be shown on the mobile device. Higher network congestion == fewer bars and the owner of that device can decide how urgent the task is or at least have an understanding about the cause of delay.

Implementing this would require a sizable infrastructure update, I would guess. Both mobile devices and backend network equipment would need to be replaced or updated to support this.

Maybe not perfect.