Internet brownouts, pay-per-byte, and other doom-claims of anti-Neutrality "researchers"

Ars Technica's Nate Anderson does a nice job evaluating the claims coming from Internet research firm Nemertes Research, who made headlines in 2007 by predicting a huge spike in traffic by 2010 (the "exaflood") that would cause internet "brownouts" (Nemertes' answer was to limit what people were allowed to do on the internet by giving ISPs the power to cut off access to services that they didn't like).

Now, Nemertes has a new claim: that net neutrality -- the idea that ISPs should manage their networks to deliver the bytes you requested as quickly as possible, rather than slowing down some bytes if they're sent by companies that refuse to pay bribes for "premium" access to you -- will result in a netpocalypse where we have to pay for every byte we receive.

Fortunately, actual Internet traffic growth rates are between 50-60 percent year over year, not 100 percent, according to the authoritative MINTS project at the University of Minnesota. And in countries like Canada (where carriers revealed much of their data to regulators as part of a net neutrality hearing), growth rates have dropped from 53 percent (2005-2006) to 44 percent (2006-2007) to 32 percent (2007-2008).

The Internet's core has plenty of bandwidth, so traffic growth really poses the biggest problem for access lines. Fortunately, big gains in capacity in the last mile aren't "excruciatingly expensive." While Johnson's single example is the most expensive last-mile buildout in the US (Verizon's transition from copper lines to fiber optics), cable and DSL operators can upgrade their lines for bargain basement prices by adopting DOCSIS 3.0 (cable) or by running fiber deeper into the network (as with AT&T's U-verse, which already offers 18Mbps connections over copper wire compared to 6Mbps on the rest of its network).

Even Verizon, which is dropping $18 billion on the job, is doing so in the very sort of environment that Johnson says will sink the 'Net--one where neutrality is assumed and differential protocol pricing is not utilized.

The Internet is about to die. Literally die!

• [dequeued]

  I’ve said it before, I will say it again, if you want to see an example of a “free market” data network, just look at cell phones, or cable television, for a little preview of what they would like the internet to be like.

  Get ready to be charged a nickel every time you resolve a domain name (not counting their corporate partners, of course).

  It’s their network, it belongs to them, of course they have a right to “let the market” decide.

  And they can also give us a great deal on email, and charge only half of what they charge to send sms messages — only 20 cents per 160 chars.
  Maybe if you pay $50/month you can send unlimited emails.

  And of course, the goal of the telcos is to make money, not to provide good service, so what incentive would they have to upgrade their networks when their making money hand-over-fist inventing new fees?

  Meanwhile, the rest of the world will have high speed cheap Internet, we will be left in the dust.
  But at least Verizon and AT&T will make money.

• [Snig]

  This seems a variant on the theme of how when it was Lily Tomlin style operators plugging cord A into plug B phone calls cost a nickel, but somehow “improvements” over the years that should have made costs negligible have miraculously caused the costs to increase.

• [Anonymous]

  If we really cared, we could just militarize against spammers. It would only take a few billion to organize a black-ops group to go hunt these worthless parasites down and execute a few hundred of them. A far cheaper solution.

  We know where most of them are- we just can’t touch them ‘legally’ overseas. So you send some “Solid Snake” mofo over there to gut a couple of these bastards and hang them by their own intestines in a hotel bathroom. Boom! Instant bandwidth.

  Of course, we don’t care. It took *years* to nail that Soloway prick, and he operated openly in the US while bragging about his crimes.

  We all should already know how this will end- Politicians will be bought and paid for by the telecoms. It’ll be engineered like the past oil shortages for the profit of big industry. “Oh, we have to raise your rates and put caps on your service, for the good of the internets!”

• [Moriarty]

  Is price per usage really that bad an idea? Wouldn’t it just be like any other utility, then? What makes bandwidth different? Why does paying for what you get = automatic ripoff?

  • [Anonymous]

    Only that A) controlling your usage (with any precision at least) is not nearly as easy, and B) at present all consumer charges for bandwidth are completely out of whack with any actual cost of providing it. In fact, they are even referred to by some operators as penalties rather than charges.

    Frankly, pay by byte might be a workable model, but it has to be a reasonable charge, and not sold in 10 gig or similar sized blocks.

• [Anonymous]

  The whole reason home computing and the internet took off in the first place was because it was cheap to set up in a grass-roots and university setting. If you make it too expensive, the “freenet” will just re-emerge.

• [Anonymous]

  @Moriarty: I suspect it’s because we don’t have to pay for it right now, so the prospect of paying for it is unattractive. The status quo breeds entitlement.

• [Anonymous]

  @Moriarty: Because bandwidth isn’t tangible. If you don’t use it today, you don’t have extra tomorrow, it’s gone forever.
  Gas and water are tangible utilities. If you don’t use them today, they’re still there tomorrow.

• [voidmstr]

  Shucks.

  They’ve been predicting the Death of the Internet because of bandwidth issues for over a decade and half.

  Not gonna happen. Bandwidth is non-scare commodity.

  “Bandwidth expands to fit the waste available” is VOIDMSTR’s LAW:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voidmstr's_law

• [Anonymous]

  Where there are bandwidth caps or traffic shaping (or both) we already “pay by the byte” — or we pay more!

  If you get 60 gigs for 50 bucks (common in Canada) then you effectively lose money if you use less than the limit. Recently they’ve decided (again — this happens every few years, until some accountant points out this costs more to administer than they gain) to charge per gig for overage, to a second cap.

  All this and they still admit they’ll cut you off for whatever they deem objectionable.

  Which is why I’m now with a DSL reseller who goes to hearings arguing against the telcos and I’m on a 200 gig limit because I’ll so rarely go over that it’s not worth the extra $10 — which would STILL be cheaper than the cable or telephone monopolies!

• [Anonymous]

  That’s how they do it in New Zeland. Pay per gig of traffic you use. Excuse me, pre-pay for a year at a time with no “roll-overs”.

• [remmelt]

  1) propose net inequality fees
  2) get shot down with net neutrality laws
  3) bill the customer: “Since we must provide a neutral net, are costs are higher; see, we now do not get the fees from the content providers! It’s not our fault!”

  4) profit.

• [remmelt]

  *our