Bandwidth reality is everywhere. And that's leaving aside the bandwidth limitation imposed on health grounds - after all, holding a powerful microwave transmitter next to your head isn't widely regarded as a good idea. So forget the idea of full-motion video on your mobile phone. A couple of frames per second is all you'll get, probably in monochrome. It doesn't matter whether you have V.90, ISDN, satellite or ADSL connections.
Service providers know it too.
BT has recently announced trials of a type of autonomous network connection, where small nodes work out the best way to handle their particular traffic, rather than a single piece of software controlling the whole network. There's now just too much traffic for an 'overseeing' program to cope, and this piecemeal approach should be more adaptive and efficient. But just like the British road system, in the long term that won't help. The amount of traffic rises to fill the available capacity. Many ISPs restrict Web site traffic to a monthly 2GB limit, with penalties for those who exceed this.