Broadband Shortage Myth

Comcast Implements 250GB Usage Cap Effective October 1, 2008.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts likes his new high-tech toys, even if using them on his own cable system is now pointless.  At the January Consumer Electronics Show, Roberts demonstrated the next generation of broadband Comcast is poised to begin rolling out to consumers in the next several months.

Dubbed “wideband,” Roberts downloaded a High Definition copy of Batman Begins in less than four minutes.  Comcast’s DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade, which bonds multiple channels together to deliver broadband speeds up to 160 Megabits per second, will be able to bring Comcast customers the latest high bandwidth applications, particularly including very high quality video, in just a matter of minutes.

Designed to compete with Verizon’s FIOS fiber to the home network, Comcast’s “wideband” service will create a new paradigm for high quality video services entering the home.

Except for one thing.

A 250GB monthly usage cap.

Using Comcast’s wideband service, customers downloading movies could easily exceed the 250GB cap in less than five hours.

Even the cable industry’s trade publications like Multichannel News are now posing questions about how exactly Comcast can promote customers upgrading to wideband service when a cap of 250GB stops the fun in a matter of hours.  What MN didn’t add to the equation is the fact Verizon FIOS does not have a usage cap and has no current plans to implement one.

So exactly why would any consumer choose Comcast wideband, with a usage cap over Verizon FIOS, which leaves you alone and doesn’t threaten to terminate your service if you use more than the cable company deems appropriate?

Another issue MN touched on, but didn’t bother extending to the real issue - stifling competition:

Imagine if all your TV were delivered via the Internet. High-quality 1080i HD video at (conservatively) an average of 5 Mbps would chew up plenty of bandwidth: roughly 286 Gigabytes in a 30-day period, given that Americans watch an average of 127 hours and 15 minutes of TV per month, according to Nielsen. Cap busted!

Imagine indeed.  Imagine virtual “cable companies” delivering cable networks and broadcast TV over the Internet.  Pay your monthly bill for data from the cable company, but watch your video programming from another provider.  A 250GB cap puts an end to that business plan quite nicely, thank you.

Comcast CEO Demonstrates Wideband At Cable Show In May

By the way, a quick note to Frontier, which still thinks 5GB a month is just plenty. Pay attention to the file sizes in this video and then get back to us about why you think your customers will never come close to using 5GB a month in the coming year or two.

BREAKING NEWS: Frontier Communications has modified their position on the 5GB usage cap yet again.  Your pushback on this unjustified 5GB monthly usage cap has continued to make a real difference in getting company officials to listen to reason.

Frontier’s website has been changed again, now deleting the portions of their DSL sales pitch which used to reference “5GB” of included access per month.  Additional changes have been made to their terms and conditions pages.  Still present in Frontier’s Residential Acceptable Use Policy is the language which defines their usage cap at 5GB per month, although they don’t formally call it that.  Instead, they consider 5GB to be a “reasonable” amount of usage, and reserve the right to terminate accounts that exceed it.  However, some other language has been introduced as Frontier backs off from implementing their cap formally:

The Company has made no decision about potential charges for monthly usage in excess of 5GB.

Company officials have repeatedly said they will not penalize customers who exceed the 5GB “reasonable” level they define in their Acceptable Use Policy, which is to be commended.  But as Frontier Communications has been continually modifying their position on the cap issue in general, both in comments to reporters and on their website, customers have no guarantees what they insist today won’t be much different tomorrow.

StopTheCap! calls on Frontier to do the right thing and remove this entire “5GB” section of their Residential Acceptable Use Policy altogether.  It is this language upon which the entire 5GB usage cap debacle was built, and Frontier can show its good faith by eliminating it from their website if they truly want to put customers at ease.

We have also learned that Frontier has taken another piece of our advice: to launch a campaign to better educate and inform their customers about how bandwidth is utilized, and ways they can reduce their usage voluntarily.

StopTheCap! strongly believes that consumers are willing to review what they are doing with their Internet connections and will reduce usage voluntarily if they understood how certain applications can consume bandwidth even if they don’t seem to be running.  And it’s a win-win for customers who wonder why their Internet connection seems so slow without realizing someone in the house is running a torrent server 24/7, or has a computer infected with a virus that is churning out millions of spam e-mails without the owner even realizing it.

Treating your customers right means allowing them to take advantage of the myriad of new applications and features a broadband experience can provide, without a draconian limit on that usage.  And customers have a responsibility to better understand what they are running on their computers.

There are several additional developments about Frontier’s 5GB usage cap, and we’ll be publishing a roundup of the latest news, including your comments and what company representatives have been telling you, shortly.

This remains a developing story.

Comcast’s announcement that it would implement a usage cap of 250GB per month comes on the heels of the company’s entanglements with the Federal Communications Commission, who spanked the nation’s largest cable operator for purposely interfering with Internet traffic Comcast felt constituted a problem on its network - namely torrent traffic.

Cable operators face the evolution of cable modem service from something primarily valued by a minority of Internet enthusiasts into a “must-have” product for more and more Americans.  And with the spectacular growth of the Internet, new applications are being introduced daily that are specifically designed to take advantage of the speeds that broadband promises to provide.

Unparalleled greed means not being able to fit all of the cash we're going to make off you into just one briefcase!

Just 24 months ago, the “problem” was peer-to-peer traffic, such as file sharing networks and torrent applications.  Customers fired up their trading software and often let it run for hours on end as they attempted to grab the latest software, TV show, or movie.  File sharing software can consume an enormous amount of bandwidth, as users share files with one another, uploading and downloading pieces of a favorite TV show or movie until a complete file is assembled.  Good etiquette dictates leaving the software running even longer to help make sure everyone else in the queue can complete their download as well.

The result was a lot of traffic going in both directions.  Most networks in the United States are designed to handle people receiving more files than sending them, and file sharing software began to challenge that paradigm.

Soon enough, broadband providers began complaining that this kind of traffic was tying up their networks, designed for what company officials thought average customers would do with their Internet connection.  People consuming a lot of bandwidth downloading music or movies required operators to spend more money to expand and enhance their networks.

Ironically, the same companies complaining about file sharing created their own “problem” by marketing cable modem service as the fastest way to… download movies and music!  DSL, they said, kept you waiting for your favorite show while cable modem service guarantees your show will be ready the moment the popcorn is popped.

The earliest theories of the artificial “bandwidth crisis” offered by companies annoyed with having to keep up with the demands of their customers, suggested that file sharing traffic would be the death of the Internet as we know it, as torrent traffic completely clogged the network, consuming any and all available bandwidth.  Godzilla’s destructive powers had nothing on file sharing, which could literally create a global Internet crisis.

Comcast decided it could address the torrent traffic problem by inspecting the bits and bytes of traffic running across its network and, at certain peak times, substantially slow down the delivery of that traffic.  Their theory suggested that this would protect other customers from the neighbors eating up more than their fair share of bandwidth.  In practice, it essentially crippled the usefulness of running any torrent application.

Comcast paid people off the street to fill one FCC hearing room, keeping conscious members of the public out. (Courtesy: Free Press)

The FCC would have none of it, telling Comcast it cannot discriminate against the traffic being carried over its network.  The answer to the traffic problem was to build better roads to manage the traffic.

Instead of simply agreeing to keep up with demand, Comcast has now approached this “bandwidth crisis” from a different angle.  It has simply put a limit on the amount of traffic each subscriber can utilize on its network during a 30 day period, regardless of what that traffic represents.

Comcast’s suggested limits on bandwidth gave a number of broadband providers the idea that they, too, could slap caps on their customers.  And since the usage cap question was first raised nationally earlier this year, the suggested caps have gotten lower and lower from each subsequent company testing or implementing them.

Cox has “informal” caps of up to 75GB per month in some areas.  Time-Warner began testing caps of up to 40GB per month in Beaumont, Texas.  Frontier announced a forthcoming 5GB usage cap, which is among the lowest in the United States.  In Canada, companies have gone even lower with caps like Rogers’ 400MB monthly cap for their $60 wireless Internet plan for iPhone owners.  Canadians were so outraged by that cap, Rogers eventually had to relent and create a 6GB monthly service package for $30.

Usage capping cable and DSL providers are in a race to the bottom as they try to learn how low they can go without creating mass defections among their customers.

Some Comcast customers have told Stop the Cap! they are relieved that at least they are on the top of the usage cap pile with Comcast’s 250GB cap, which at first glance appears generous.  In fact, only a small minority of their customers will currently exceed that kind of usage cap.

But regardless of how generous a usage cap appears, it still raises a lot of questions.

1. If informal efforts to control “bandwidth hogs” have been so successful, why bother with a cap at all?

For several years, Comcast has informally enforced its own internal interpretation of a usage cap with customers who consumed incredible amounts of bandwidth, usually as a result of running a home-based torrent/peer-to-peer file server, web server, or other application that runs contrary to the residential acceptable use policy.  Company officials send warnings to customers who consume hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth every month.  Comcast’s own public statements indicate such warnings are usually successful.

“We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily,” Comcast notes on their website.

So why bother the 99% of the rest of your customers with a formal usage cap if they don’t come anywhere close to exceeding it?  It’s awfully hard to convince people of a broadband bandwidth crisis if you also claim the overwhelming majority of your customers consume less than 5% of your proposed cap!

2. While most people won’t come close to 250GB of usage, unless they are backing up their files through an online backup service or are downloading a very large number of files, the usage cap that seems generous today is draconian tomorrow.

This little piggy says you've used enough Internet for this month!

The biggest problem usage caps bring to the table is the artificial drag they create on innovation.  In the global race to be leaders in the emerging Internet economy, the United States was in a strong position to lead the world in high bandwidth next generation applications like streamed high definition video programming, store-and-forward video on demand and Tivo-like recording, storing TV shows online and delivering them to you on demand, online file backup services, high quality video teleconferencing, new “cable-TV”-like services over broadband which compete with cable and satellite providers, and more applications yet to be dreamed up.

Just ten years ago, when most cable modem service began to really get off the ground, the Internet of the late 1990s was very different from the Internet of today.  A usage cap based on what customers did then would likely be under one gigabyte a month, as users satisfied themselves with low bitrate RealAudio streams, slideshow-like online video, and a World Wide Web considered primitive by today’s standards.

As broadband Internet became established in a growing number of consumers’ homes, the applications to take advantage of the increased bandwidth followed.  Voice Over IP telephone services, high quality streamed audio and video, and online file storage would never have been developed based on the Internet of the late 90s, and would never have gotten off the ground in a world with usage caps.

High definition streaming video consumes many gigabytes per hour.  It’s among the very first exciting applications being made available to consumers with broadband connections, but will die an early death if usage caps are the order of the day.

3. Usage caps are anti-competitive and convenient, particularly as those who mandate them have a direct interest in limiting the potential of competitors that exist today or cannot get start-up funding tomorrow.

Usage caps actually do nothing to solve the “bandwidth crisis” the cable and DSL companies suggest are on the verge of killing the Internet.  They merely restrict the natural growth of traffic, allowing companies to pocket higher profits and spend less on expanding and enhancing their networks.

Sky Angel, a "cable"-like system for Christian households, delivers more than 65 channels over broadband. How can they survive usage caps?

More importantly, cable companies conveniently put a stop to plans to bring competing multichannel video packages to consumers over the Internet.  The “cable company online” model exists today with providers like SkyAngel, which delivers Christian and secular “pro-family” programming to its customers over a set top box connected to the Internet.  More than 65 channels ranging from TBN to Animal Planet and The Weather Channel reach their customers over broadband for a monthly subscription fee.  SkyAngel’s service is in peril in a world with usage caps that will limit viewing to as little as a few hours per month before exceeding usage caps.

Netflix and some satellite dish companies offer video on demand programming utilizing the Internet to deliver the programming to subscribers.  In a world with usage caps, you will be stuck watching those programs only from your cable company or local video rental store.

Future businesses that seek start-up funding to build the high bandwidth applications of the future will get a guaranteed rejection once potential investors learn that consumers will be unable to take advantage of those applications because they will exceed their usage caps and have their service shut off.

Of course, the convenient exception to the usage cap world comes from companies that partner with that cable or DSL company.

Frontier has already announced it will exempt its partners from their 5GB usage cap.  ESPN360 and their online backup service preferred partner will enjoy the benefits of an uneven playing field in the marketplace because they aren’t subject to a usage cap.  Everyone else is.

What about Time-Warner and Comcast?  Will their partner services also enjoy exemptions from usage caps while everyone else is forced out of business when customers discover that using them puts them over their monthly limit?

What about Voice Over IP?  Cable companies are giving telephone companies a real headache by offering telephone service over cable lines at highly competitive pricing.  But independent companies like Vonage and MagicJack don’t enjoy the benefit of being exempted from usage caps limiting the number of calls you can make or receive.  If you are owned or are partnered with a cable or DSL company, your service gets a free pass from the usage cap.  Everyone else is potentially buried by it.

4. The punitive measures suggested for those that violate usage caps scare customers into using their connections even less, to the great benefit of the bottom line of the broadband provider.

What’s the best way to make sure your customers use their connections as little as possible?  Impose outrageous penalties for exceeding usage caps.  Comcast proposes to send a warning letter first, but then potentially turn off a customer’s service for six months to an entire year if they dare to use their broadband service more than the company wants.

Other providers have discovered the tangible benefits of the “penalty rate.”  It guarantees striking fear into the hearts of your most hearty customers, when to exceed the cap means paying 50 cents per MEGABYTE for traffic above and beyond your capped limit, as Rogers charges Canadians right now.

Download that one hour episode of CSI: Miami, and pay up to $175 in penalties on your next bill.  Ouch!  Imagine the conversation at that family’s dinner table after your son or daughter downloaded a TV show before you had a chance to tell them you were at your monthly limit.  Horatio Caine can then come and solve the homicide at your house.

It all comes down to paying the same or more money for less service.  And if you are potentially going to have your service cut off or outrageous overage fees billed for exceeding that cap, you will make darn sure you don’t even come close to it out of fear of exceeding it.

Being in the “bandwidth shortage business” means more profits for you, less service for your customers.

The best part about imposing usage caps is that you get to invent word of a “bandwidth crisis” to justify penalizing your customers, provide absolutely no independent evidence to prove such a crisis exists, reduce your investment in keeping your network up with the times, and help protect your product lines from pesky competition. 

After all, your cable modem or DSL service was among your most profitable products before usage caps were even proposed, but now you can make even more money.  And if a competitor ever does arrive without usage caps, you can just drop them and go back to making a decent profit instead of one that rivals the oil industry.

Yesterday, Stop the Cap! raised the issue of how exactly Frontier Communications can offer access to the various “extras” the company offers to broadband customers all while limiting them to 5GB of consumption.

A number of readers have shared exactly the same concerns, not only with us, but the company as well.

It is interesting watching our concerns here get answered with shifting policies and vague promises over there, both on the Frontier website and in replies to customer inquiries.  Unfortunately, they keep digging the hole they’ve gotten themselves into deeper and deeper with every passing day.

Intentionally or not, Frontier has now stepped on the landmine of the Net Neutrality debate.

Stop the Cap! reader William received a reply from Frontier that was remarkable for its less-than-certain tone, and the latest company line:

I can certainly understand your frustration and confusion on who’s
statement’s to follow.

Unfortunately at the present all we know is what we have been told about the situation and that is that we (Frontier) are reserving the right to charge or terminate service for those that exceed the cap.

Currently feedback such as yours is being recorded and passed on to those that are in charge of this proposed change.

The email your received is correct, we are not currently enforcing this policy and we have been informed that, at the present, the plan is to start the enforcement part of the policy in December or January. Again that is the current time table we have been made aware of.

I do know that we have been made aware that certain activities such as carbonite backup and other services we offer can be excluded from the bandwidth usage. I wish I could offer more information with regards to the plan, unfortunately what was/is published is what there is to know at the present. We are passing all feedback to higher levels and it is possible the plan may change before it goes live so to speak.

I know the above does not answer all your questions, unfortunately since the plan is not finalized I can only offer what information I know to be accurate at the present.

There are several points raised in this reply.

First, it’s clear that those contacting Frontier’s support team should recognize the support personnel are absolutely not responsible for the corporate policy decisions being made by management in Connecticut.  It is patently obvious to a lot of readers who have heard back from Frontier that there is no great enthusiasm for a usage cap among a lot of folks working for the company.  We have always tried to draw a strong line between those responsible for these usage caps - upper management, and the employees who are stuck having to implement them.  We have nothing but good things to say about the support people who are in a tough position on this issue.

Second, our own sources have confirmed the timetable outlined in this reply from Frontier’s support personnel.  And again, that is entirely a management decision.

Frontier Steps on Net Neutrality Landmine As It Digs the PR Hole Deeper and Deeper Over a 5GB Usage Cap. (Slowpoke used by permission, copyright 2006, Jen Sorensen - Visit http://www.slowpokecomics.com.)

Third, Frontier’s newest acknowledgement that they are considering excluding their preferred partners from the usage cap now opens the can of worms over the Net Neutrality issue.

Certain telecommunications companies have been attempting to change the Internet as we know it today.  Currently, every online service has an equal shot on the network.  But some companies want to change the playing field, by offering selected partners “enhanced” access to customers, faster data networks, and more prominent placement, either by paying a higher fee or entering into a partnership with an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

A “preferred partner” quickly becomes the cream rising to the top, not based on their merits, but rather by their deep pockets and willingness to pay their way to number one.  Better yet, such partnerships allow both companies to reap the rewards gained from driving more subscribers to the content they wish to promote, and enjoying the enhanced advertising revenue which often accompanies such services.

More alarming are efforts to manipulate customers by penalizing them for accessing non-preferred content, and a usage cap or bandwidth limitation on those services that lack a preferred partner agreement is a great way to accomplish that.

This doesn’t just manipulate the playing field, it destroys it, giving enormous advantages to a select few.

Such agreements will devastate a lot of start-up companies that have brought the most creative and revolutionary new services to the Net.  Virtually all of these companies would not exist without reaching out to investors for initial financing.  In a world without Net Neutrality, inevitably one of the questions that will be asked is whether or not that start-up has any “preferred relationship” with a bandwidth provider.  If that company does not, questions will be raised about the viability of that venture, especially if usage caps and bandwidth limits are widespread.  And once an agreement is made, how does someone new break through?  Under these conditions, expect a number of investors to simply take a walk.

Stop the Cap! has previously raised questions about ISP’s making an end run around Net Neutrality by imposing caps but exempting content or services accessed from that provider’s web portal.  That has always been our prediction, but until today, there has not been a real world example of that practice in action or imminent.

Now, Frontier Communications is poised to prove us right once again by potentially giving cap-free, preferential treatment to their partners, but sticking it to every other video content provider or online backup service where the 5GB cap will apply.

Ask yourself: Would you use an online service that consumed significant bandwidth that was subject to a usage cap or one that was exempted from it?  Is this what you are paying for every month - to be told what services and sites to visit and effectively penalizing you for choosing to make up your own mind?

It’s just one more reason why usage caps are an incredibly bad idea, and one that actually invites government scrutiny, if not direct oversight.  It’s an issue we intend to raise with our elected officials.  I’m certain Frontier Communications had no intention of being a poster child for the issue of Net Neutrality, but as we’ve seen time and time again in the short time Stop the Cap! has been online, there is a fundamental disconnect by upper management in understanding the implications and consequences of what they thought would simply be a great way to enhance profits and reduce “excessive usage.”

Free Press, a media reform group, issued a damning report (Adobe Reader required) Friday about efforts by the broadband industry to introduce metered or capped Internet access plans, accusing the industry of engaging in scare tactics and making an end run around the Net Neutrality debate.

“Consumers should not have to choose between secret and arbitrary blocking and the very unreasonable practice of metering,” said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press and author of the policy brief. “That is a false choice, one most providers don’t even consider necessary or practical. These scare tactics shouldn’t deter anyone from pursuing the policies we need to preserve a free and open Internet.”

Among the conclusions of the brief:

• It is a false choice to suggest that since Internet service providers cannot arbitrarily block online content, they will be forced to meter. There are a whole host of other non-discriminatory options available to providers that are more effective at managing congestion.
• Talk of metering is not new and has nothing to do with the FCC’s laudable decision to prohibit providers from blocking applications. Cox has had bandwidth caps in place since 2003 but was still caught blocking applications. Time Warner floated plans to meter as early as 2002.
• Metering is the wrong solution for Internet users. History shows that consumers strongly prefer simple, flat-rate pricing to metering. They do not want to look over their shoulder and face surprise higher monthly bills. This is likely to encourage all subscribers – not just high-bandwidth users — to curb their Internet use.
• Metering is bad business for Internet service providers. Not only does it decrease Internet use, it discourages the development of and demand for new and innovative applications that give the Internet its value. ISPs that meter are likely to see a subscription drop that hurts their bottom line.
• Congestion should be treated as a short-term problem, while continued investments are made to keep pace with demand. Offering simplicity and abundance is the best outcome for users, providers and the future of the Internet.

Stop the Cap! applauds Free Press for joining an increasing number of industry watchdog groups and consumers vehemently opposed to price-gouging usage caps and highly arbitrary caps on Internet access.  In the United States, broadband providers attempting to drum up attention for a so-called “bandwidth crisis” have proposed usage limitations ranging from 5GB per month to 250GB per month, with each proposal considered “effective” at controlling usage.

One of the nation’s top authorities on global Internet traffic growth says his latest data show no reason to fear network capacity shortages, as traffic growth may even be slightly decelerating.

An article published Tuesday in Telephony Online carries new evidence that the so-called “bandwidth crisis” may be based more on fear than reality.

Professor Andrew Odlyzko, director of the University of Minnesota’s Interdisciplinary Digital Technology Center, released a report last week charting the growth in Internet traffic.  Odlyzko concluded that growth continues at predicted levels between 50-60% per year, which is unchanged for at least the past three years.

Odlyzko introduced his research remarking that the “threatened deluge that was supposed to clog the Internet” still has not made any appearance.  In fact, he said, bandwidth rates may in fact be trending downwards.

Proponents of the Network Bandwidth Congestion Crisis theory usually argue that the apocalyptic end of the Internet as we know it will occur either from capacity shortages on the Internet backbone, or because of congestion at the local “last mile” level, between the broadband provider and your home.

But the raw data suggests neither is an impending threat, particularly assuming that broadband providers do not attempt to shortchange stable investment in their networks to meet the demands of their growing customer base.

Broadband providers could engineer a self-fulfilling prophecy of a bandwidth crisis if they reduce their investment in their networks, preferring to take additional profits from the broadband business while cutting costs in order to prop up shareholder return or profitability.  But such moves, which are often uncovered by carefully reviewing required public filings made for shareholder review, would quickly expose the fallacy of the position taken by several bandwidth providers that usage caps are necessary to reduce demand, which could have been met by responsible company practices to maintain and expand their networks to the same historic degree they have done for the last several years.

Vint Cerf, “Chief Internet Evangelist” for Google’s Public Policy Blog, raised objections and concerns about the broadband industry’s efforts to impose “consumption-based billing” on customers.

Cerf noted plans by several cable operators to test usage caps in an effort to manage their Internet traffic.

“At least one proposal has surfaced that would charge users by the byte after a certain amount of data has been transmitted during a given period, [...] a kind of volume cap, which I do not find to be a very useful practice, ” said Cerf.

“Given an arbitrary amount of time, one can transfer arbitrarily large amounts of information,” he said.

Excerpt: “Network management also should be narrowly tailored, with bandwidth constraints aimed essentially at times of actual congestion. In the middle of the night, available capacity may be entirely sufficient, and thus moderating users’ traffic may be unnecessary. Some have suggested metered pricing — charging by the megabyte rather than flat fee plans — as a solution to congestion, and prices could be adjusted at non-peak periods. These kinds of pricing plans, depending on how they are devised or implemented, could end up creating the wrong incentives for consumers to scale back their use of Internet applications over broadband networks.”

To date, the two largest cable broadband providers, Comcast & Time-Warner are already considering moving to a consumption-based billing system, but with no decrease in existing rates.  Instead, customers exceeding those usage caps will find overage charges on their monthly bills.

Several DSL providers, most notably Frontier Communications, have already imposed even more draconian usage caps on their customers; Frontier now limits DSL customers to just 5GB of traffic per month.

NBC has announced plans to stream its National Football League games live online this fall, with exclusive access to extra camera angles and multiple video streams, in near high definition broadband bitrates.  Viewers will also have access to live blogging from NBC sports announcers and game highlights and live statistics.

NBC & The National Football League plan to stream pro football this fall, but those with usage capped broadband will probably have to stick with old fashioned TV to watch.

Unfortunately, broadband customers on usage capped services need not apply - the video quality will consume too much bandwidth and will drive many customers well over their monthly caps before the season comes to an end.  So while Verizon FIOS customers will be able to sit back, popcorn in hand, Frontier DSL customers will need to stick to the live blogging, text based web pages, and hope their favorite game is on local television.

NBC has also warned metered broadband customers to avoid the 2,200 live hours of Olympics coverage starting in the next few days.  It will simply be untenable for a usage capped customer to spend time viewing live coverage without quickly exceeding their usage cap.

It’s just another example of the impact usage caps bring to Americans trying to take advantage of the latest benefits the broadband platform can provide.  Virtually every day, customers will find another application they simply cannot afford to access, all because of unjustified bandwidth limitations.

The NBC logo is a registered trademark of NBC/Universal.  NFL and the NFL shield design are registered trademarks of the National Football League.  Their use does not constitute approval of the content herein.

Viewers may have to stick with TV to watch the Olympics for free.

While the rest of the wired world gets ready to sit back and enjoy Olympics coverage from China, Americans are being told you can have the Olympics online, but you better not have metered broadband access.

When NBC partnered with TVTonic to provide NBC Olympics On The Go, it had to specifically warn viewers with metered broadband access not to bother.  Streaming high quality video feeds can consume a significant amount of bandwidth, and can easily allow unassuming viewers to win the the gold in the Biggest Bandwidth Overlimit Fee competition.

TVTonic's warning to broadband users to not use the service if they are using a broadband provider with usage caps.

Content providers are starting to wake up to the real threat of the imposition of usage caps across the United States, limiting cable and DSL broadband customers from accessing content that was developed specifically for the broadband platform.

TVTonic is just one of several online services that could effectively be shut out of doing business in the United States because of broadband usage caps.  The company provides access to over 100 broadband Internet TV feeds, many transmitted in “high definition” quality, all of which would bring viewers ever closer to hitting their monthly limit.

Other providers such as Hulu and Joost provide legal access to hundreds of TV series, movies and specials at no charge to viewers.  But with bandwidth usage caps, will you be willing to spend your limited bandwidth watching?

Suspiciously, the “bandwidth crisis” that the industry continues to blame for the imposition of unreasonable usage caps stops at the water’s edge.  Customers in Japan and Korea enjoy broadband connections often a hundred times faster than what is available in the United States, at much lower prices and no restrictive caps.  In fact, outside of North America, nobody has heard of a bandwidth crisis.

While many broadband providers continue to reap handsome profits from their broadband services, demands for higher shareholder returns and struggling quarterly results from their other product lines in a stagnant economy have led many to decide investing in a lobbying scare campaign is a better use of their money.  It’s easier to try and convince Americans they are the problem, and limit service accordingly.

It’s good to know that I can order up video on demand from the comfort of my own living room (transmitted over the woefully over-congested cable system’s network if you believe them).  It’s not comforting to watch FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell parrot the broadband industry’s propaganda talking points on demand, and in a voluntary guest column in Monday’s Washington Post yet:

Robert M. McDowell, FCC Commissioner

Today, a new challenge is upon us. Pipes are filling rapidly with “peer-to-peer” (”P2P”) file-sharing applications that crowd out other content and slow speeds for millions. Just as Napster produced an explosion of shared (largely pirated) music files in 1999, today’s P2P applications allow consumers to share movies. P2P providers store movies on users’ home and office computers to avoid building huge “server farms” of giant computers for this bandwidth-intensive data. When consumers download these videos, they call on thousands of computers across the Web to upload each of their small pieces. As a result, some consumers’ “last-mile” connections, especially connections over cable and wireless networks, get clogged. These electronic traffic jams slow the Internet for most consumers, a majority of whom do not use P2P software to watch videos or surf the Web.

At peak times, 5 percent of Internet consumers are using 90 percent of the available bandwidth because of the P2P explosion. This flood of data has created a tyranny by a minority. Slower speeds degrade the quality of the service that consumers have paid for and ultimately diminish America’s competitiveness globally.

While we at the Federal Communications Commission are trying to spur more competitive build-out of vital “last mile” facilities, especially fiber and wireless platforms, this congestion will not be resolved merely by building fatter and faster pipes.

Peer-to-peer traffic has been an issue for the Internet long before the industry decided to call it a “bandwidth crisis.”  And despite McDowell’s pleas for “cooperation,” putting engineers to work solving these problems instead of regulation, the broadband industry that appears before him with regularity has decided that cooperation really means a coordinated public relations campaign, with the delivery of identical talking points about a bandwidth crisis, a sky is falling plea to Washington to use taxpayer funds to improve the infrastructure formerly developed with private funds, and the imposition of egregious usage caps no matter what else happens to control the bandwidth piggies.

Judicial action by the entertainment industry trade associations have actually reduced a lot of the illegal file trading and peer-to-peer usage.  And just as the company behind BitTorrent launches a whole menu of new, completely legal services, the cable and DSL providers come by and lay waste to such services, as consumers become reluctant to waste their bandwidth allotment on perfectly legitimate content.

Bandwidth saturation is not a problem only seen by the bandwidth providers.  Software developers, professional and otherwise, are constantly refining their applications and protocols to reduce the effects of bandwidth saturation, when your Internet connection effectively freezes up.  More importantly, the boneheads in the entertainment industry have finally realized that the best way to stop illegal distribution of your content is to offer that content yourself, legally with advertiser support.  New services like Hulu and Joost give people exactly what they want - TV shows with limited and tolerable commercial interruptions without the need to fire up Pirate Bay and their favorite torrent application.  It’s also cheaper than suing the very people consuming your content!  That McDowell misses the forest for the trees is not a surprise - he was an early advocate and supporter of Digital Rights Management (DRM), a concept so despised by consumers, its days are numbered on most of the services that embraced it.

McDowell repeats the commonly heard “5%” refrain usually seen near the top of the industry press releases on the impending “bandwidth crisis.”  But the rest of us are still waiting for independent verification of this claim, and an explanation as to whether or not this traffic is legitimate access to the “unlimited” service every provider has advertised to consumers, or some form of “abuse” already dealt with in existing acceptable use policies, which can be quietly enforced without hiring bandwidth management consultant Count Dracula to suck the life force out of the Internet for everyone else with usage caps. 

I’m also hard-pressed to understand exactly how that 5% of traffic poses a major threat to America’s competitiveness globally, while a 5GB usage cap applied to 100% of one’s customers is shrugged off, if even acknowledged.  One need only ask the CEO of Netflix: Is the erection of a Berlin Wall of usage caps a positive development for your business plan to deliver legal, high quality video content to subscriber televisions over broadband?

In McDowell’s world view, those consuming large amounts of bandwidth on perfectly legal products will shamefully achieve membership in the “Tyranny of the 5% Club,” abusing the rights of Bob down the street who has a computer to check his Yahoo! e-mail and little else, but now he has to wait because you insisted on watching Harry Potter.  Shame on you.  It’s all your fault.

Is McDowell unaware his doctrine of “cooperation” and “putting engineers on it” already has a solution to the “last mile congestion” problem, itself a logical lapse in the argument arsenal this industry uses to hoodwink us into believing the Internet is on the verge of crashing and burning.

DOCSIS 3.0, an improvement over existing data delivery technology still in place at most cable companies, can go a long way towards resolving any neighborhood congestion issues with channel bonding, which allows multiple channels to be devoted to upstream and downstream data.  If Time Warner or Comcast doesn’t want to implement the new standard, that’s hardly the fault of the Harry Potter fan down the street.

At the same time they decry the collapse of online modern civilization, somehow these same companies  find plenty of bandwidth to roll out more video channels you never asked for (but will be used as an excuse for next year’s rate hike), dozens of video on demand options, Voice Over IP telephone service, and the increasing number of digital HD channels and switched digital video, which transmits a TV channel to your neighborhood only when someone chooses to watch.  Data is data.  If there is a bandwidth crisis for cable modems, where is the plea to stop using too much television, stop ordering too much pay per view, and get off the phone because we’re out of bandwidth.  I haven’t heard those panic buttons pushed, have you?

If the FCC wants to help spur America’s leadership role in the new Internet economy, it can begin by recognizing America is falling further and further behind other nations, because corporate greed is devolving Internet access domestically into a highly expensive, relatively slow, and usage capped nightmare.  While American website operators will be redeveloping content to get rid of graphics or anything else that might eat too much data, the rest of the world moves forward with innovative broadband applications and content, all made available only to the wealthiest Americans who can afford the price.  For the rest of us, time to get  reacquainted with Gopher.