KOOP-FM Austin is presenting its award winning “A Neighborly Conversation” program this afternoon to discuss whether Time Warner Cable’s proposed bandwidth caps are good or bad for protecting the citizens of Austin and driving innovation. KOOP has invited two guests: Chip Rosenthal, Chair City of Austin Technology and Telecommunications Commission and Chris Boyd, owner of Midas Networks, a local internet services company.

The show ran Wednesday afternoon from 12-1pm CDT.   Thanks to our reader Brad who shared this news with us.

We liveblogged the event in the comments section.  I will post a link to the archived show when it is available so you can listen again.

Rep. Dan Maffei (D-NY) 25th Congressional District Map

Rep. Dan Maffei (D-NY), who represents New York’s 25th district (which includes eastern Monroe county), will be holding an open Town Hall meeting this Thursday at 6:00pm.

If you are interested in appealing to Congressman Maffei to work on the issue of broadband usage caps, and to ask him to support Congressman Massa’s efforts, please consider attending, especially if you reside in his district.

The meeting will take place at the Irondequoit Town Hall, 1280 Titus Avenue.

You can also contact Rep. Maffei’s local office to speak on this issue, even if you cannot attend. Calling is the most effective way to draw attention to an issue of concern. Writing/faxing a letter is second. E-Mailing is better than nothing, but most congressional offices are swamped with e-mail, and it can be less effective in measuring what hot button issues are most important in a district. Take a few minutes and call.

Irondequoit Office
1280 Titus Avenue
Rochester, NY 14617
Phone: 585-336-7291
Fax: 585-336-7274

Thanks for the tremendous support from folks not just here in Rochester, but also in the other cities dealing with this. I am overwhelmed with the excellent ideas, suggestions, and responses and am going to begin bringing them together so we can begin work on several different fronts. I will be personally getting back to many of you asking if you can help head up some of these efforts. This absolutely will need to be a group endeavor, and I’d also like to have others writing articles here and helping to keep each other up to date.

I have a major article to write next about alternatives people in Rochester at least can find, but I’m hunting around for options in other affected cities as well. We’ll begin a mass exodus from Road Runner well before there are any usage caps, if only to let them know as customers we feel abused, taken for granted, and outraged over this naked attempt to profiteer. And we’ll be coordinating a public list of those specifically leaving for this reason.

Then, we’re going to get involved in two additional fronts:

– Public policy initiatives to start looking at legislative or regulatory approaches to market abuse;
– Sending gifts and flowers to Verizon corporate begging them to either invade Rochester or write a check from petty cash and buy out Frontier if they are incapable of competing on a level comparable to what Verizon is providing across the rest of the state.

And we’ll be partnering with other websites that are also working on this issue, particularly in places like Austin where the outrage over this action is growing with the same intensity it is here in upstate New York. Stay tuned!

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.

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.