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!

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The cable industry used to face the wrath of DSL companies who ran very effective advertising telling people that cable modem users were all sharing the same bandwidth and slowing down the network for everyone.   They’ve used enough Internet – log off now!   The cable industry’s proposal to start capping usage opened a unique opportunity for DSL providers to finally get some competitive advantage.   Hampered by an aging network, slower speeds, and less ability to rapidly increase speeds, DSL has tried to compete on price.   Imagine if the telephone companies saw cable caps and tailored ads like this to their cable competitors, telling families they’ve used too much Internet and they’d better log off or else.

But telephone companies always take the opportunity to miss a great opportunity and, in the case of Frontier, have elected to one-up them with a cap so low that dial-up users could consume more bandwidth.

So let’s take a look back to the good old days, when the Internet was our friend, and DSL was a noble competitor in the broadband marketplace.