Telepocalypse

Surprise!

I was recently asked what about the Internet in the last 10 years surprised me most, and what surprise I anticipate in the next 10 years.

In millions of homes around the world are little WiFi boxes that you can turn over, and each says underneath "Made by Linksys, a Cisco company. San Jose, USA."

So the big surprise in the last 10 years is that you can go to almost any town in the developed world, walk around a bit, and find free fast connectivity to the rest of the world. I couldn't possibly have guessed that.

And the surprise for 2015? There will be the same little WiFi-like boxes in millions of homes and businesses. Ten times faster, ten times cheaper. But underneath they'll say "Made by Cisco, a Huawei Technologies company. Shenzhen, China."