The recent announcement by a major cable Internet provider that they will be signing up new customers with bandwidth limits as a trial gave me a new perspective on how important broadband is to New Media.

High speed unlimited Internet bandwidth is vital to the success of Podcasting and New Media. Unlimited broadband is just as important as Dave Winer’s work with Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and compressed media formats such as mp3. Broadband is one of the key ingredients that makes this industry possible.

As a result, some United States broadband users may soon experience a “bandwidth crunch”. Although relatively new to the U.S. market, bandwidth crunches currently exist in many other countries including Canada. There is no direct evidence that bandwidth crunches deter Podcasting and New Media, but it is true that most New Media downloads come from the United States.

The Internet community has created creative ways to deal with bandwidth issues. BitTorrent solved this very problem on the hosting side of things. For broadband consumers, the only option is to switch services, which is most likely what will happen.

I believe this broadband company’s trial will fail, not because it didn’t make the broadband provider more profitable, but because this model of charging per bandwidth does not lend kindly to New Media. Today’s announcement that HBO will start offering downloadable content has reinforced my thought that New Media will influence broadband services in a positive way. Once this broadband provider discovers this, I am confident the trial will be terminated and we will not see a bandwidth crunch in the United States anytime soon.