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.