Hologram broadcast a reality in ten years?

Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Broadband, Editorial, Internet, Science

Imagine, if you will, sitting in the local coffee shop waiting for your ever so tardy girlfriend to show up before your lunch break ends. Suddenly, she is right in front of you, only not in the way you had hoped. It’s a hologram, beaming straight from your cellphone right before your eyes. Her digital representative a fully rendered three dimensional image of her informing you that she will be there in 5 minutes. No, this is not science fiction - it’s the future. And the future is eye popping.

With the demands of technology growing by the second, our everyday bandwidth needs are increasing exponentially. Cisco and Verizon are both anticipating a quadruple increase in bandwidth requirements by the year 2014! This tremendous surge in our bandwidth needs can be attributed largely in part to the burgeoning 3D television market, as well as the growing use of streaming HD video.

“There is no question in my mind that 3D is the next thing to happen in video. It’s the next logical evolution of the technology” stated John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems.

While 3D video is set to pave an information highway with HOV lanes galore, there are other promising, and more interesting, advancements yet to come - namely holographic projections. In fact, Verizon is predicting that hologram images will be broadcasted into your home in as little as ten years! You know that futuristic stuff you were looking for? Yeah, it’s coming.

“3D will make things more lifelike, ” states Chambers. “But I think in 10 years we’ll be seeing holograms used. Not only can this be used to enhance business communications, but imagine the implications for certain vertical businesses like medicine.”

It should be noted that holography has already been used before by businesses such as Telstra and Cisco, but as a commercial product use of hologram images lacks the necessary bandwidth requirements. CIO Officer Shaygan Kheradpir is already testing the kind of high speed network needed for such heavy duty applications in his home, running a 1Gbps connection straight from his humble abode in Upper East Side Manhattan. With the introduction of holograms, there will be a need for this extremely high speed connection to be commonplace in the average American home.

Aside from online 3D content and beaming holograms, the large allowance of bandwidth should spawn some other very interesting developments. We’re keeping our eyes peeled to the future.

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