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So after yet another trip to Geneva I am finally back home for the weekend. My regular job takes me far and wide quite often and the glamour of travel has worn off over the years. It’s great seeing new places and I always try to make time to get out of the office/conference/event to take a look around. The big, big downside is the actual travel – hanging around in airports and then the flight itself.

I’ve never been lucky enough to catch an upgrade but I hold out some hope that one day I will join the elite of humankind. I can only imagine what life is like behind that curtain. Before take-off they settle into their lushly padded seats to sip a aperitif and enjoy their choice of newspaper or magazine, read to them by their favourite actor.

After take-off they unbuckle and take a dip in the pool, followed by a quick sauna before dinner. They eat roast swan, caviar and foie gras served on a silver platter by a personal butler. As they sip on their Bollinger, the live cabaret show picks up momentum with a Sinatra tribute act and the Cirque Du Soleil. After a cocktail they feel a little drowsy so the command their butler to push the button on their armrest, instantly transforming their seat into a four-poster bed with a feather duvet.

Alas such a world is far from me as budgets tighten and circumstances prevail and I have to travel cattle class where the seats generally come in two sizes: Torment and Torment Lite. I don’t know who is responsible for specifying airline seat sizes but I am guessing that they are probably leprechauns. You sit with your knees pressed against the seat in front and your elbows locked with the unfortunate sole either side of you. If you are unlucky like me you have been dealt the weirdo with no personal hygiene or the mother and screaming baby as your partner for the journey.

Torment Lite seats are generally near to the emergency exits and have a smidgen more space than the Torment seats. The drinks are free unless you want alcohol – and half an hour into the flight most of the passengers are begging for alcohol just to take them out of the hell they are experiencing. The in-flight entertainment is a series of force-fed movies you watch on a tiny screen and listen to through headphones you had to buy because they use a weird plug.

The agony is prolonged when they serve the meal – after five minutes of guessing “what’s beige, red, green and brown and smells like a stomach wound?” you are considering gouging your brains out with a spoon, but that plan is quickly scuppered when you realise the spoon is plastic.

The only comforting thought I have is that those in First Class really don’t know what life is like behind the curtain. For all they know the notion of ‘First’ could be complete con. We could have a stream and waterfall on our side, a banqueting suite and 360 Cinema. The airlines should treat their privileged classes to a quick tour of the cattle class – let them really appreciate their good fortune. Alternatively they could make the majority cattle class passengers feel better by creating a sub-cattle class, a ghetto class, where the most impoverished passengers travel standing on their heads in a sewerage tank.

Of course the inequality of air travel is just a parody of the Internet. Capacity and service doled out disproportionately. And if the bolts come away and the wings drop off we are all screwed, regardless of where we are sitting. From IPTV, to social video such as YouTube, virtual worlds and a food of image based user generated content, cloud computing, this seismic sea wave of content is about to push the internet way beyond its current capabilities.

A study by Nemertes Research predicts that the U.S. Internet of 2015 will be at least 50 times larger than it was in 2006. Internet growth at these levels will require a dramatic expansion of bandwidth, storage, and traffic management capabilities in core, edge, metro, and access networks. It estimates that these changes will entail a total new investment of some $137 billion in the worldwide Internet infrastructure by 2010. In the U.S., currently lagging Asia, the total new network investments will exceed $100 billion by 2012.

As some telcos already feel the pinch and are beginning to block capacity, or ‘traffic manage’, it is clear that the bolts have already been loosened. Like the initiatives on global warming, its time for us to pull the various Governments, technical communities and Corporations, to pull together and develop a coherent and deliverable strategy that will ensure the wings don’t fall off this great network of networks.

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