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.

It’s baaack.  Gary Kim, self-described member of MENSA, elected to link to our recent article about a customer in Austin having his Road Runner service cut so that he could drag out that we have heard before.  Mr. Kim, who has penned his views for a boatload of industry trade publications, as well as running a few of his own, has trotted out that old chestnut about not paying flat rate for gas, electric, and water.  Except he takes the analogy to the extreme “conservation” argument, as if the world of online video is leading us to a broadband global warming catastrophe.

Are you as smart as the industry guy?

Now I’m not a member of MENSA.  My experience with IQ tests was limited to those wooden pyramid puzzle things they used to put on your table at the Cracker Barrel.  But I’ll give this a shot anyway.

Lots of people get upset about bandwidth caps that strike me as extraordinarily generous. Does anybody think the planet or the economy would be better off, companies better able to improve service or people given incentives to “do the right thing” if electricity, gasoline, water, natural gas or heating oil were sold on an “all you can eat” basis.

Which bandwidth caps are extraordinarily generous?  The 5GB cap on your wireless phone plan (or the one Frontier considered but discarded in light of the competitive advantage it now seeks in one Time Warner test market), the 40GB power user tier Time Warner started out with, the 150GB limit AT&T is playing with, or the 250GB cap Comcast has today?  The caps are all over the lot, with each company swearing on a stack of press releases their cap is the one most justified and required if a company can survive the Irwin Allen-like Exaflood future.

Second question: What exactly is “the right thing?”  Bowing to the cable television industry’s business plan opposing a-la-carte video packages in order to enjoy the revenue that comes from all you can watch television?  Is it the wrong thing for people to make their own decisions about what they do with their Internet connection?  We’ve been down the road of why the Internet is not the same thing as oil, gas, or even water for that matter.  StoptheCap! reader Brion perhaps had the best debunking of this analogy:

Samuel Greenholtz, a retired manager from Verizon, offered this absolutely impenetrable thinking on why broadband providers needed to impose caps on customers and were forced to charge way too much for them:

While a tiered pricing structure may have been inevitable in the long run, if the corporate bashing horde stayed out of the way, the vast majority of users would have avoided paying more for additional capacity.  Time Warner Cable does give the politicians what they are looking for – more bandwidth availability for all of its subscribers.  Still, the lowest speed package is not going to be enough for most of the consumers – and so they will have to take the higher tier offerings — along with the new overage charges.  Had the MSOs been allowed to just cap excessive users, most of the subs would have continued to receive a reasonable amount of bandwidth at the same flat price.

Ironically, all of the illogic obsession with net neutrality will result in even more of a usage-based pricing scheme.  There will now be several layers of capping.  The anti-ISP crowd has actually created a more beneficial pricing system for these companies.  And there is certainly nothing unfair about this development.  But the clamoring for so-called equality resulted in an acceleration of the removal of the all-you-can-eat advantage for consumers.

What in the world is this man talking about, and why is he part of some so-called “expert network,” Gerson Lehrman Group?

Broadband Providers: How Low Can They Go?

The history of usage capping actually goes back into the earliest days of Internet service providers, providing both dial-up and broadband service in areas where network capacity simply didn’t allow customers to utilize unlimited bandwidth.  Some Time Warner customers in the midwest and central part of the country lived under “limits” for years, mostly due to lack of any viable competition.  The imposition of caps on customers has always been driven by the capacity argument, never by a more honest claim that lack of competition discourages significant upgrades, and allows a provider to limit usage to ensure a higher rate of return. Where competition exists offering similar types of service, caps and limits are much rarer, speeds are higher, and pricing is lower.  A provider that doesn’t regularly invest in upgrades to his network in a competitive marketplace will soon no longer be a part of that marketplace.

Today, a handful of major broadband providers are now colluding in a version of telecommunications limbo, with several watching each of the others “experiment,” to see how low a cap they can set before subscribers and public officials rebel.  Multichannel News columnist Todd Spangler literally wrote that “Time Warner is taking one for the team.”

The “corporate bashing horde” argument, which Greenholtz casually tosses out without any examples or proof, doesn’t hold water.  No group I am aware of has ever bashed the widespread deployment of broadband service from multiple providers.  Oh wait, there is one.  Those providers themselves when they attempt to squelch community cooperative broadband services or municipally-run wi-fi networks, run for the benefit of residents.

Greenholtz completely ignores the fact broadband service is almost entirely unregulated, and providers have always been free to set terms and prices.  Someone draw me a map where corporate critics have developed the leverage to force operators to impose usage caps and tiered pricing.

The net neutrality issue that comes into his argument stems from the Comcast controversy a few years ago, when the nation’s largest cable operator attempted to manage traffic on its network by “throttling,” or limiting the speed of customers using certain bandwidth intensive applications.  Comcast claimed they were primarily targeting peer-to-peer software, which allows users to exchange files with one another, during peak usage of their network.

But this came about at the same time several large corporate broadband providers were advocating for a new distribution system for the Internet, one that would potentially no longer provide an equal level of priority for data traveling across the Internet.  Opponents feared that broadband providers could discriminate or even throttle traffic that didn’t pay their asking price.  And then Comcast provided the net neutrality opponents with a real-world example of bandwidth throttling in action.

Comcast abandoned, at least for now, the bandwidth management approach that included throttling, and instead imposed a simple 250GB “limit” on residential accounts.  Those exceeding that amount of usage risked having service suspended.

Mr. Greenholtz fails to connect this event with any cogent argument or evidence that suggests multiple capped tiers were borne as a result of this controversy.  Indeed, until Time Warner “took one for the team,” other domestic broadband providers simply upgraded their networks to handle capacity issues and imposed no caps, or have simply asked residential users to limit their usage, mostly between 150-250GB per month.  Customers seeking more than that can purchase another account, move to a business plan, or switch to another provider, where available.  Curiously, the imposition and testing of lower limits has often been in areas where competitors either do not exist or cannot offer an equivalent level of service at the same price across an entire community.

But Greenholtz does say one thing that has been obvious to all of us: the Internet service provider is using this as an excuse to create a “more beneficial pricing system.”  Of course, it’s only beneficial to them, not to consumers.  The latter routinely object in overwhelming majorities to the concept of usage caps and the elimination of the existing flat rate pricing which has always been profitable for the broadband industry.  Any other connection, particularly with the absence of any evidence, is tenuous at best.