The same old fundamental misunderstandings about the Internet that got former Sen. Stevens into so much trouble with his pronouncement that the Internet was a “series of tubes” that were being filled up by commercial providers, which is somehow why we cannot be for net neutrality, comes back time and time again with alarmist rhetoric about exafloods, brownouts, global data slowdowns, and the risk of the collapse of the Internet itself.

Just you wait and see.

And folks have been waiting and seeing since 1996:

• 1996: Full Capacity
• 1997: Overheated demand
• 2002: Soon be a shortage
• 2002: Shortages could start appearing later this year
• 2007: Internet could run out of capacity in two years
• 2008: Internet to hit capacity in two years

How can we be saved from the broadband collapse, drowning in exaflood tidal waves and zetaflood cataclysms when the funeral service was held more than a decade ago?

Using fear to advance a corporate or marketing agenda is hardly a new concept.  Unless we do “x,” “y” will happen and ruin your life has been used along with alarmist rhetoric to justify virtually everything.  For broadband usage capping and metered service, it’s front and center.  In fact, wherever service is lousy with limitations and someone has their hand out looking for more of your money, you can be sure the “clogged tubes” argument is going to be a big part of the snowjob.

Snow isn’t a big problem in Australia, but that doesn’t stop the blizzard of nonsense from showing up down under, where the Internet is a particularly lousy experience for Aussies forced to endure draconian caps from monopolistic providers.  Exceed your caps there and your connection slows to near-dial-up speeds.  Never trust a guy in a ludicrously loud shirt, nor someone who channels Sen. Stevens in calling the whole thing a series of “pipes.”  Maybe Pete Blasina got the shirt from Cisco, who he also conveniently notes is supplying switches to save us from impending doom.  They also happened to supply him with a lot of his talking points.  The bit about YouTube traffic in one month equaling Internet consumption in 2000 came from them.

Duncan Riley (who was the source for the history lesson on exaflood threats) does a fine job debunking the same nonsense we have to endure in North America.

The story is nearly always the same: telcos and infrastructure companies fund research that finds that the latest trend online at the time (audio, video, HD video, P2P, Sykpe and social networking are some previously used) is too much for the Internet to handle. The reasons behind the studies are usually variations on a theme: Government regulation or Government financial support. Which is where we start our story on how Sunrise played a role in the latest outbreak of industry astroturfing.

But how did a primarily American focused astroturfing campaign end up be served to Australians on breakfast television?

The outbreak of “Internet is full” stories this time was remarkably subdued. The last research paper was released in November 2008, which might account for part of the silence, although Sunrise says there’s a new report coming (the contents year to year ultimately deliver nearly the same doom and gloom message.) Given strong coverage of the 2007 outbreak as being an astroturfing campaign, news rooms may have been a little wiser this time round.

Duncan doesn’t realize the Internet is Full Crisis ’09 started last week with the latest Nemertes report we debunked a few days ago as a whole lot of industry-sponsored nonsense.  But it’s remarkable the astroturf campaigns have enough industry cash behind them to push this stuff worldwide.  Duncan’s piece links some other outbreaks of astroturfing so check it out.

StoptheCap! must organize a Truth Squad of volunteers willing to confront sloppy journalism, lazy reporters, and Kool-Aid drinking consumers hoodwinked into actually believing that metered pricing is about saving them money instead of fattening broadband provider profits.

Your job: To find press accounts that might as well have been rewritten industry press releases, those that adopt the premise that the provider is pushing, and exposing industry talking points that go unchallenged in the media.  Then the call to action goes out to bombard the reporter with protest e-mail, confront the bias in the reporting in letters to the editor, and pro-consumer pushback in comment sections where the public can learn some facts for a change.

The Kansas City Star utterly failed in its report on Saturday, lapping up industry talking points and presenting them in a myopic view of the future of broadband.  Reporter Scott Canon quoted opposition from one public statement on the Free Press website, one sentence from a group called Knowledge Ecology International, and a sentence from a press release from Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY).  After that, he paddled around the pool with one industry talking point after another.

… Continue Reading

StoptheCap! reader Tim wrote this morning to alert us that Fox News had picked up a story from the Sunday Times of London warning of the great Internet brownout about to afflict us all.  It turns out our old friends at Nemertes Research have trotted out another sensationalist study (right on cue after a month of nonsense about it from Time Warner Cable) predicting our online demise from too many users.

But is it any good?

The original article sure wasn’t.  John Harlow, who needed reporting assistance from Adam Lewitt, couldn’t be bothered.  Lazy reporters who reprint sensationalistic theories as fact without ever bothering to ask any questions about the source or challenging the theories, is a hallmark of sloppy, never break a sweat journalism.  Even Ted Ritter, quoted in the story, called the journalism sensationalistic and said the reporter “took great liberty with my quotes,” and he’s the guy pushing the theory!

I keep asking, “where’s the media” on so many issues that deserve more than a slapdash reprint of the cheat sheet on the study, toss in a few quotes and call it a day.  But then I realized in this day and age, we are the media.

So I plodded my way through the report.  It’s the same alarmist stuff as the last one, and the one before that.

They said it in 2007 and the only scurrying that came after it was from Nemertes’ clients running to Kinkos to make copies and get them into the hands of legislators to justify whatever political agenda they were selling that season (no to net neutrality, yes to bandwidth caps, yes to government funding or tax credits for private broadband, etc.)

And that is exactly the problem.

Nemertes’ findings are like magic sprinkles on top of a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cone.  They work with every flavor to justify whatever you want.

On all such matters, the only fact you have to remember is to “follow the money.”  Who pays for this research?

Ted Ritter from Nemertes answers:

Our research is funded by our clients: Vendors, service providers and fortune 500 enterprise.

And the results of this research are celebrated by all of the above:   Equipment suppliers love it because they can trumpet the scary findings on their “upgrade now” brochures. ISPs love it because they can claim they have to cap and tier customers in order to buy equipment to combat the “exaflood.” Proponents of government funding for the Internet love it because it hints major funding to subdue the crisis might be needed.

Without those supporters, this study would never have been done in the first place.  Additionally, Nemertes appears to have an additional revenue stream from licensing the results of the study to interested clients, who wouldn’t bother unless they had a vested interest in trumpeting the findings.

In other words, this is a classic case of “conflict of interest.”  But if you order in the next 20 minutes, you also get these extra benefits:

Since we all know the results are made public, and media availabilities are prominently mentioned on the website, a paying client has the bonus of a seemingly independent third party who will be available to discuss the findings and results.  That’s a quick path to media coverage, the more sensational the better.

Since it’s Nemertes saying it, that keeps the clients’ hands clean when they license a purportedly independent report and mention it prominently when delving into public policy lobbying, public relations, and marketing strategies.

It’s also unsurprising that Nemertes stays out of specific public policy recommendations, because that is exactly what clients want. They’ll provide their own spin as they see fit, just as happened in 2007 and will no doubt happen again.  Why pay for a study that makes a public policy conclusion you oppose?

It’s all very neat and tidy, especially when Mr. Ritter complains that the media was sensationalizing the results.  I’m sure his clients think exactly the opposite.  But then sensationalism and spin follows Nemertes’ report wherever it appears. It drew panic headlines in 2007, was dredged up again by a few marketing people to justify broadband usage caps in 2008, and largely the exact same panicky coverage is appearing now, coincidentally in the same month Time Warner used Nemertes’ theories to justify their Internet rationing effort.

One local Rochester television newscast even suggested a router failure responsible for a Time Warner service outage this past weekend might have been the result of an Internet “brownout.”  That was Baskin-Robbins Flavor #7, “Very Berry Strawberry.”  See, it does work for everything!

The Sunday Times doesn’t have time to check the facts with anyone else, and there are many others who have a different view on this.  Andrew Odlyzko is a professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota, and has been tracking Internet growth since 2001:

Nemertes Research has an updated version of their study from last year, and continues to predict a collision between demand and supply, unless dramatic increases in investment are made. The basic, and highly debatable, assumption behind their work, though, is that traffic is growing at 100% per year or more, and will continue to do so for the next half a dozen years. So far there is little evidence of that, though.

Nemertes waves away Odlyzko by claiming that their discrepancy in data with his comes from the ‘secret Internet’ private backbones. Of course, that data Odlyzko can’t get from them is the same data Nemertes cannot get from them either. So we are left with an assertion without raw data.

The creepy part of all of this is, *I* could use Nemertes’ study to help the cause on StoptheCap! Nemertes says nothing about the need for usage caps and limits — it instead suggests that insufficient infrastructure spending will cause the Internet to brown out causing loss of innovation, jobs, and all the rest.  So I *could* use Nemertes to justify why cable companies have a basic responsibility to stop cutting infrastructure spending and start increasing it, instead of capping people to ration the net.

But I won’t, because I have integrity.  I realize that no report is worth mentioning as factual and accurate without the underlying assurance of its independence and lack of bias.  As I wrote Mr. Ritter:

If you want to do reports for clients who subscribe to your service, then send them the results and don’t make them public. Let the clients make the report public, because they are effectively paying for it. It prevents the accusation you are astroturfing on their behalf by insulating their involvement and investment in the findings.

Otherwise, a list of all supporting clients by name, in addition to whether they have been licensed to use the material, absolutely must be added to the bottom of your findings, or those findings are rightfully dismissed out of hand as bought and paid for.

Alternatively, if you are doing this in the public interest, do not accept funding from those with a vested interest in the findings, and do not license their use by anyone. Let people read them on your site, in full and in context, not after some marketing group has massaged the relevant points for their latest strategy.

Ultimately, I think Nemertes basic conclusion that the Internet is growing, and fast, is borne out by reality — just not at the panic stricken pace they suggest.  I also think that just like every other technological challenge we have faced, innovation will bring solutions to problems we fear and panic about today, but aren’t that big of a deal tomorrow.

The short answer continues to be, upgrade the network.  The bad answers include another effort by some of those that we’re likely to discover paying for Nemertes’ studies to advocate supersizing profits through reduction in competition, installing artificial usage limits to retard the growth curve, and trying to legislate protectionism for incumbent providers.

Beaumont, Texas

Beaumont, on the eastern border of Texas with Louisiana,  is one of America’s mid-sized cities of just over 100,000 people, best known for the Texas Wildcatters,  a smattering of oil and gas companies, and the first advance by Time Warner, America’s second largest cable television company, into this year’s issue of bandwidth usage caps.

Company officials first announced the market test  in January, impacting only new customers in Road Runner’s Golden Triangle Division with usage caps ranging from 5GB  for the Lite Tier plan to 40GB for the Turbo Tier.   The charge for exceeding your plan’s cap is $1 per gigabyte.

Like other companies talking about usage caps, everyone likes to use their own internal definitions of what 1GB of usage represents.   Time Warner’s is:

1GB gets you about 70,000 e-mails, 34 hours of gaming or 1,344 hours of Web browsing; or, it’s the approximate equivalent of downloading 569 photos, 277 music files, 7 hours of low-resolution video (YouTube), 3 hours of standard definition streaming video or 45 minutes of high-definition streaming video.

Again, my own calculations bring some different numbers to the table, and, honestly, does anyone really worry about going over a usage cap from reading e-mail and web browsing alone?

Randomly grabbing 277 MP3 music files consumed 1.56GB of usage.   Downloading 569 photos assumes your collection consists of pictures averaging 1.75MB apiece.   I grabbed some digital photos I took to Walgreens for printing and looked at the files I uploaded to their server.   My pictures, at high resolution (but not extremely high) come closer to 8MB apiece.   One  episode of Law & Order (around 42 minutes without the commercials and dropping the stream before the end credits rolled) consumed 360MB at standard definition rates.   As noted earlier, a movie delivered by Akamai can consume 6-9GB for just one 720p high definition film, nearly double that if you choose the 1080 version.

Taking each of these activities into consideration individually, usage caps of 20GB a month (or 40GB) don’t immediately sound alarming.   But people do not use their Internet connections for a single activity, and the more people you bring to the table, such as in a four person household, the easier it is to see just how quickly a family, especially with teenagers, will quickly exceed even these kinds of caps.

Beaumont residents were the first to participate in a Road Runner trial with usage capped.

There are users out there who use their connections for little more than basic e-mail and occasional web browsing, and Time Warner offering a plan at a discount for those users is not a problem, assuming they actually promote such plans to potential customers.   The greater issue  comes from a service provider charges the same price (or more) for a plan that is now seriously limited by a cap.  And to date, there has been no proposal for retaining an “unlimited” tier in addition to offering a range of capped tiers for those who figure they will use considerably less.

Wireless telephone companies, which historically sold usage in plans with buckets of minutes, are now moving towards offering flat rate options – pay one price, talk all you like, while the broadband industry, which marketed “unlimited, always on” connections for a variety of content they include in their advertising are now headed in the other direction, limiting consumer choice and access.

Time Warner has been complaining about broadband growth as both a content distributor and as a bandwidth provider, which adds an interesting twist to the rationale companies have to implement caps.

Saul Hansell, a reporter and blogger for The NY Times, noted company officials are growing tired of basic cable networks making them pay license fees for content, and then seeing that content being given away on the web.

Speculation that bandwidth caps may also have to do with limiting the amount of streaming video that consumers watch have also been offered as a reason for providers adding caps to their Internet service.

Time Warner’s rationale for bandwidth capping was, according to the company itself, to control what they felt was excessive use of their network.

“This is not targeted at people who download movies from Apple,”  Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley told the NY Times. “This is aimed at people who use peer-to-peer networks and download terabytes.”

And again that brings up the question of how a 20-40GB cap is the most effective way to control a minority of users running a torrent client or server 24/7 and consuming terabytes over an entire month.   That is the equivalent of dropping a nuclear weapon on a pesty moth.   The weapon does get the moth, but it also impacts on a far larger circle of customers that don’t come close to consuming that level of data.   Every ISP has language in their contracts with customers that allow them to cut off the 24/7 torrent addict today.   Some, including Comcast, have enforced these kinds of provisions before without a usage cap.

To date, consumer reaction in Beaumont has been mixed.   Many are convinced the caps are unjustified, too low, or simply too expensive for what you get.   Others object to the excessive rate of $1 per gigabyte for overage fees.   Some don’t like the idea of having to measure everything they do online in fear of exceeding a usage cap.   There are also some that like the idea of paying for what they use, and are willing to consider different plans based on what they actually consume if it also means they get the speeds they were promised in advertising.

Dudley argues that the usage cap issue is not a foregone conclusion at Time Warner.   Dudley told GigaOm that TWC’s experiment in Texas was just that “a test.”

“If consumers don’t want it, the company is going to back away from it.  I think this is a trial and we are going to learn from this trial,” he said.

StoptheCap! wants the company to learn as well.   If you ask customers if they’d prefer paying the same amount they do today for unlimited access or capped access, there will be little surprise as to the outcome.

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.

Taking a moment to return to the bandwidth battles of days gone by, here’s another commercial from Pacific Bell about how cable is rationing their bandwidth.   Today, it’s a whole new battle with a fictional war based on a whole different kind of fictional intelligence: “a bandwidth crisis” that will lead to America running completely out of Internet bandwidth if we don’t cap everyone today.   No independent verification.   No independent evidence.   Just a lobbying firm in Washington, a bunch of equipment manufacturers who stand to make a pile of cash selling the equipment to keep everyone on a bandwidth diet, and happy shareholders who don’t have to worry about telecommunications companies making practical investments to keep their networks on track to grow with the rest of the Internet.   It’s quicker and easier to call you a bandwidth hog – log off now!