So it’s a little bit of a lead weight to say that internet video has cable companies freaking out.  After all, why pay the cable company for TV when you can simply turn on your internet browser and get all the streaming video you could ever want.  Hulu, Netflix, YouTube…BitTorrent…the possibilities are as varied as they are high in number.

Thus it’s only natural that the cable companies are in the midst of a full scale four alarm panic attack over this.  But the internet service providers?  What’s got them in a panic?

See, most networks aren’t built to handle large quantities of streaming video.  Back in the day, when these things were being built, they figure, oh, a little text here, maybe some Flash cartoons, online shopping, no big whoop.  We don’t need the fattest of fat pipes to handle this stuff!  But then the industry began to change…but the infrastructure didn’t follow.

Now the ISPs are basically trying to hunt the Nextel Cup in a hay wagon being pulled by a recalcitrant donkey, and they’re suffering for it.  The handful of diehards who bought the fastest speed stuff are pummelling it day and night, downloading entire gigs of data, day after day, and there are more people looking to buy those fattest pipes every day–a lot more people than they ever envisioned.

The cable companies are finding themselves outmoded.  The internet providers are finding themselves woefully unprepared for the future.

No wonder internet video’s got them freaked out.