The Growth in Bandwidth
Nielsen’s Law of Internet Bandwidth states that user bandwidth will grow by 50 percent every year.2 Figure 3 shows
the empirical data that fits the Nielsen exponential growth curve as well as the network technology used at that time
to support the increased demand for bandwidth.
1,000,000,000
100,000,000
40 I ICT TODAY
10,000,000
1,000,000
100,000
10,000
1,000
Year 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020
Bits Per Second
100
10
1.5 Mb
T1
128 Kb
ISDN
56 Kb
Dial up
30 Mb
DSL
1 Gb+
FTTH
300 Mb
Cable
FIGURE 3: The growth in bandwidth. This chart shows the empirical data that fits the Nielsen exponential growth curve
and the network technology used at that time. Source: Chart is derived from NNG. ©2020 Nielsen Norman Group
(https://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth).
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