Nemertes Research Group, an analyst firm based in the United States, has announced on Saturday that the Internet network might head towards a collapse in the next few years, since the current infrastructure might not be able to sustain the more and more demanding customers and download.

According to the study, which was partly funded by the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA), the network capacity would be outstripped, while the cost of an total upgrade would be of 137 billion dollars.

Nemertes reported that the network now struggles in order to carry a huge amount of data, which causes a severe slowdown of the surfing speed.

Larry Irving, co-chairman of the IIA, reported for BBC News that "We must take the necessary steps to build out network capacity or potentially face internet gridlock that could wreak havoc on internet services.”

The Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) already campaigns for universal broadband in the United States, as 42 billion dollars to 55 billion dollars are needed to be spent only in the United States, in order to provide broadband access capacity.

The study on the Internet infrastructure and capacity has shown that the network could be exaflood in 2010. In the next three years, popular Web sites such as Google and YouTube are expected to be severely affected by the slowdown, being much harder to download files from the Net.

The new rich media applications, the wireless Internet and gadgets that offer access to the internet, all of these “provide consumers ever-increasing access to the Internet, exponentially accelerating consumption of Internet bandwidth”.