This idea would work really well with miniaturized consumer electronics that have increasing storage but bandwidth still seems to be lacking.
In the developing world, this means that really anymore, there is only a one time cost hit for the massive storage (and maintenance). Then, each file that is downloaded on a user’s machine is just a pointer to the file. Essentially, a cache.
Oh, I like how it’s dubbed Poor Man’s Broadband.
Reshifting this a little, we could see how larger iPod/iTouch units in close proximity with other phones that have already traversed the web for the content they’re trying to get to can essentially “share”. This would help the network companies decrease their bandwidth, and help users because their Wifi connections would be the ones downloading instead of using Edge or 3G data services.
The challenge then becomes where you’d store these nodal servers that would store the content. I go to coffeeshops almost 4-5 times a week to do work. It would be great if there was a $200 device that coffeeshops could buy to act as a NAS and have the “already downloaded/cached by someone else, here it goes” feature. Although, sitting in some of these places frequently, I realize some people are looking at random NSFW stuff that no one else would go to. Or at least I hope not.
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