What sort of advances are we looking at in terms of bandwith in the next 5 years?

is their any new technology beyond cable/dsl?

8mb is going to be common place soon. In the uk NTL are taking the lead and setting 6mb as their standard from next year. I don't think things will get much faster as whats the point? 8mb will give you live steaming and a full film in about 10 minutes.

A second internet.

verizon is currently rolling out FIOS (http://www22.verizon.com/FiOSforhome/channels/FiOS/root/package.aspx) (fiber optic), i think it starts @ like 20M down and 2M up.

What sort of advances are we looking at in terms of bandwith in the next 5 years?

is their any new technology beyond cable/dsl?

One new thing gaining a lot of steam in the U.S. is broadband being delivered over the power lines. If it gets to the 8-10Mbit range, it will cause a some havoc for the phone/cable and satellite services (including DSL).

Beyond things like that, it will just be more of the same.

This isn't particularly relevant to the future of the net in terms of bandwidth, but it is relevant to the future of the net:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug05/1700

NTL is upgrading my broadband to 10mb in the near future for no extra cost. They already upgraded it to 2mb without my knowledge for free!

The days of huge phone bills and 3.3kps transfers are well and truely left behind in the 20th century!

Just some thoughts:

The future of Internet will depend on true AI routers that will seemlessly integrate wired and satellite service.

For common data that is accessed by many people such as news, music and movies, those files will be on a continuous loop around the world and the packets will be copied and picked up by your local router.

Higher and higher bandwidth....