Remember the days of dial-up internet? 

Back in the 1990s, a dial-up modem and America Online was how many of us got our first taste of the internet.

The screeching and squawking modem, desperately trying to connect at a pokey 56 kbps — if you were lucky. Just downloading a simple web page could take half a minute. 

And forget about watching online videos. 

The early telephone modems were eventually replaced by faster DSL and cable connections delivering 1–10 megabits per second. This allowed decent web browsing and basic video streaming. 

But today, the slowest cellphone wireless data speeds are far faster than the then super-fast T1 and DS3 internet lines that businesses paid thousands of dollars per month for back in the ’90s.

Then fiber-optic broadband finally brought gigabit speeds to homes and offices around the world. Streaming 4K videos became a possibility. 

The latest wireless technologies like 5G are now capable of blasting data at a previously unthinkable 20 gigabits per second. That's almost 360,000 times faster than those old 56k dial-up connections.

High-speed internet has profoundly impacted our lives. The rise of high-bandwidth applications like video-conferencing, online gaming, streaming media services and cloud computing would not be possible without these performance leaps. 

But there’s still a long way to go, as other technologies that demand ultra-fast network connections are advancing at a similar rate.

Autonomous vehicles require high-speed connectivity to navigate and react safely. And as artificial intelligence and virtual reality get adopted by more people and industries, we will need exponentially greater speed and bandwidth capacity.

This is especially true for data centers, where demanding AI applications will require ever faster networks to interconnect the servers undergoing training, or doing work based on already-trained models.

We've come a long way from dial-up, but the journey is only just beginning. A dizzying array of life-altering applications lies ahead.

A Clearer Picture

Most technologies don’t have such a gradual and measurable trajectory of improvement as network connectivity. They typically stall for years as innovators encounter roadblocks and diminishing returns, then lurch forward following some breakthrough.

But there is one other tech that has followed a very similar path. And it’s one that is right in front of your nose.

Right now.

That’s right, screens.

Both television screens as well as the screen you’re most likely reading this on — either a personal computer or a mobile device.

You probably remember the bulky rear-projection TVs from the early 2000s. Huge, heavy, nearly impossible to move — and with a picture quality that doesn’t even compare with the modern televisions that could be moved up and down stairs by just one person.

If your goal is to measure the pace of how technology has developed this century, nothing gives you a better idea than looking at the resolutions, sizes and prices of television screens over the years.

In 2003, your computer display probably had a resolution of no more than 1,280x1,024 or 1,400x1,050. And your cellphone certainly didn’t have anything better than 176x220.

In just a few short years, these standards were obliterated. Apple debuted the “Retina” display for their mobile products in 2010, effectively quadrupling the pixel density on their products. Around the same time, 1,080-pixel televisions and computer monitors were replacing LCDs.

That technology quickly became outdated as well, with 4K becoming the standard not only for monitors and televisions, but mobile devices as well. Resolutions were now being seen around 3,840x2,160, with 2017’s iPhone X displaying 458 pixels per square inch.

Not slowing down at all, this decade is welcoming 8K TVs as the new standard. By harnessing OLEDs, or organic light-emitting diodes, displays have once again taken a huge leap forward, now enabling displays of 500-plus pixels per square inch.

OLEDs’ ability to completely turn off and on quickly, not affecting neighboring pixels, allows for not only a clearer picture, but higher contrast and faster performance. 

They’re also flexible enough that they can easily be used for mobile displays.

So why does this matter?

It’s because the solution to a clearer picture is the same as the solution to the network speeds that will be needed to usher in the new era of futuristic technology.

Tomorrow I will tell you about the technology that is making connections at the speed of light.

Until then, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter. Do you feel like network speeds are keeping up with other technologies? With more demanding video resolution and larger files that need to be transferred, does it feel like it’s getting faster or slower? Share your thoughts on this, or anything, at feedback@technologyprofits.com.