In Google's 'Land of the Free' we soon forget that much of the Internets infrastructure was paid by the dot comm bubble. Our love for all that's Internet is now causing demand to out strip capacity! The result is slowing page load times, brown outs and a future where we may have to pay more for quality of service content. These slow downs mean that e-commerce and web application/SaaS providers need to maximise their page load times to keep customers returning.

The University of Minnesota (MINTS) has estimated that Internet traffic is now growing by a staggering 60% a year. And this excludes greater internet access in China and India! Much of this growth comes from mobile phone apps, YouTube, HD video and the iPlayer (UK). The increasing use of business SaaS/web apps such as Salesforce and now with the Microsoft juggernaut coming on stream with BPOS, and Azure results in even more Internet traffic!

Deloitte have warned us before that the "Internet is approaching its full capacity." They've said 'The impact may be most noticeable in the form of falling quality of service', 'Surfers are most likely to be annoyed by the slowdown in service. And it may only take an unexpected upsurge in video usage to turn the inconvenience caused by a drop in access speeds into full-scale consumer dissatisfaction.' Indeed, AT&T has warned us that the internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by this year (2010).

Left in the hands of the ISP/communication companies with a drawn-out $137 billion investment, what can SaaS/web app and e-commerce providers do to protect their service from negative impact. Do what the hard pressed mobile platform providers are doing: speed up your site with caching, minimise your app, optimise your architecture and constantly track page load time performance. Why... because in the 'land of the free' consumers and users expect demand (!) rapid response times or they'll move supplier in a couple of seconds.