When you have seen lots of hard problems solved, it perhaps is easier to be optimistic about solving other hard problems, such as universal broadband availability at high speeds and reasonable costs, mostly everywhere. One example is the 40 percent of Welsh homes will have access to 100 Mbps service by June 2016 (with a committed information rate of 10 Mbps).

In addition, 90 percent of all sites will have access to speeds of at least 30 Mbps “premises peak  information rate” (line speed) and 2 Mbps committed information rate (minimum performance if the network is highly loaded).

At  minimum, 95 percent of sites will have access to 24 Mbps service. That will be part of a broader move that should see access speeds in developed countries reach about a gigabit, on a widespread basis by 2020 or 2025.

In April 5, 1998, Jakob Nielsen projected that Internet access bandwidth was on a growth path to reach 1 Gbps by 2020, growing about 50 percent a year.

Up to this point, Law of Internet Bandwidth has proven quite accurate. That is why predictions of gigabit speeds by 2020 are not wildly optimistic. That would be a simple extrapolation from past speed increases.

Then there’s mobile broadband. Global smart phone shipments are forecast to reach 1.8 billion in 2017, accounting for 82 percent of total mobile phone handset shipments, up from 55 percent in the third quarter of 2013, according to NPD.

The compound annual growth rate for smart phones over the next five years will reach 21 percent, while feature phones will decline at a CAGR of 16 percent, according to NPD.

The majority of smart phone growth will come from the Asia-Pacific region, especially China. China is forecast to grow 63 percent in 2013, and is expected to comprise 30 percent of the smart phone market by 2017.

Though some remain pessimistic, affordable high-speed Internet access is not going to be a problem, long term, any more than providing “telephone service” to billions of people in the developing world has proven to be insurmountable.