At first I checked the calendar – nope, it’s not April Fools Day. Then I read the article to see if the title, “Editorial: Caps are welcome” was really a bit of headline sarcasm, and that the body of the article would complete the sentence in some way that would make sense (as in “Caps are welcome – in retirement homes”, though even that would make the unwarranted assumption that no senior citizen would actually want to use the bandwidth they are paying for).
I did discover that the author on this particular editorial actually lives in Australia, where apparently the broadband service is horrible, like it will be in the United States if the phone and cable companies get their way.
Anyway, without responding to the editorial point by point, I just want to mention what I think is the underlying fallacy behind the editorial, at least insofar as we in North America are concerned, and that is that the caps will only affect a small percentage of “broadband hogs” – these are supposedly the “heavy downloaders.”

photo credit: mshobe
Now, let me point out that the satellite broadband providers have actually come up with a method of dealing with broadband over-usage that makes some degree sense, even though users tend to hate it. The way it generally works is, you are allowed to download so much per day. If you come close to reaching the limit, your download speed is severely reduced, for example to somewhere around 256K. The next day, you again receive full bandwidth (at least until you use up that day’s allotment). The point is, this makes sense for a lot of reasons – it accomplishes the goal of keeping anyone from using far too much bandwidth (to the point that it degrades service for other customers) but it still lets the customer access basic services like e-mail and web pages (although pages that contain embedded video will load rather slowly). And no customer ever gets hit with an unexpected bill for overage charges.
But, that’s not what some cable and phone companies want to do. Instead of actually limiting the bandwidth of those whose usage they consider excessive, their plan is to let them keep using bandwidth to their heart’s delight, then send a huge bill at the end of the month. If anyone can’t see the problem with this plan, you’re probably either not a U.S.A. resident or you are still in Junior High school using your parents’ Internet service.
Let’s think about this for just a moment. Do we think that, in the future, new Internet-based applications are going to use MORE or LESS bandwidth? Looking at past trends, my guess is MORE.
Now, then, do we think that new technology will make it MORE or LESS expensive to provide that bandwidth? Again, if we go by past trends, the cost of providing bandwidth should continue to drop, particularly as new technologies are developed that squeeze more bandwidth out of existing fiber circuits (that’s the nice thing about fiber, when you want more bandwidth you don’t usually have to replace the fiber, you just replace the equipment at the endpoints with something that utilizes the existing fiber more effectively).
Okay, now I want you to think really hard about this one. Even if customer bandwidth consumption stayed at current levels, and the cost of moving those bits around the world kept going down, do you think that a phone or cable company would ever reduce their prices (absent serious competition that does not now exist in most areas?). Have your phone and cable bills increased or decreased over the last several years?
Okay, so if your bandwidth usage has a tendency to go up, AND the phone and cable companies have a tendency to raise prices, do you suppose that it’s at all possible that as the bandwidth usage goes up, the “caps” before metering starts will keep getting REDUCED? I’m sure the goal at the cable company, and the wet dream of the phone company executive, is to see the day when no one pays flat rate for their Internet service anymore. Just as in the days when you paid a “flat monthly rate” for your phone service as long as you didn’t go over a certain number of calls per month, so it will be with your Internet service. And just as there were senior citizens that never made phone calls and always paid the minimum rate, there will be people who do nothing but read and send the odd piece of e-mail who, in theory, will pay the basic rate.
Why do I say, “in theory”? Well, here are a couple other things to keep in mind. First, broadband service isn’t presently regulated by any public service or public utilities commission, and is barely regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. What that means is that if your phone or cable company decides that you aren’t paying enough – that you are a “deadbeat” (to use the term that some credit card companies use about customers who always pay they balances off in time, and never incur any interest charges) – they may simply decide to tack on a few extra GB of usage. How will you contest it? Who will you complain to? They will have you by the part of the anatomy where it hurts the most (speaking as a guy here). Even if you then decide you can live without the Internet and cancel your service, they will still sic the bill collectors on you.
(I am convinced that one reason the phone companies are losing wireline customers is because so many have in the past had billing disputes and, not knowing how to complain effectively, either paid money they did not rightfully owe or had their service disconnected and/or their credit rating harmed by their refusal to pay. That sort of thing leaves a REALLY bad taste in the mouth of a customer).
And then there’s the other possibility. Let’s say that someone doesn’t like you and is out to get you. Maybe your kid is being cyber-bullied. Whatever. All someone has to do is somehow get a “trojan horse” program onto your system that does whatever it takes to suck up loads of bandwidth. Today if that happened, your broadband provider would probably notice and notify you (and maybe suspend your service until the problem was fixed), but from your point of view it would be a denial-of-service attack, nothing more. But the minute bandwidth caps go into effect, suddenly your ISP has a financial incentive to let as much traffic flow into your system as possible, since YOU will get stuck with the bill. Note we are not talking here about traffic you instigated (say, by foolishly using a torrent-type program) but rather about traffic sent to you without your knowledge and prior approval – and without even trying too hard, I could probably think of a dozen or so ways that could happen (everything from a piece of software that too aggressively “phones home”, to misdirected packets that come to you because some teenage hacker was trying to instigate a denial-of-service attack against the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and fumbled-fingered the IP address, and is sending his zillion packets to you instead).

photo credit: jetzenpolis
Now, if the past is any indication, I am urinating into the wind here. The big broadband providers, who (in case you hadn’t noticed) are quickly becoming duopolies or monopolies in their service areas, will crank up their PR machines and tell you that bandwidth caps are necessary and good and right, and that only an unpatriotic supporter of all that is evil would oppose them. AND (the Big Lie), they will only affect a very small percentage of customers. Yeah, right. That’s possibly true TODAY. And YOU, little lobster, have just been lowered into the pot of cool water, and never mind the hissing sound and that faint whiff of natural gas you smell.
Does anyone remember how people used to place calls to each other back in the days of the black-and-white movies? You picked up the phone and told Tillie the operator who you wanted to speak to, and she connected you, and (if local) it was a free call. Then along came rotary dialing, and people hated having to look up phone numbers and dial them, but they were placated by being told that they could call “Information” and get the number for free, if for some reason they could not look it up. THEN the phone company said some people were hogging the time of the Directory Assistance operators (by then it was called Directory Assistance) so they had to start charging the heaviest users, those who made more than 20 calls a month to Directory Assistance. Then the number of “free” calls went down to ten, then five, then three. THEN they started using computerized equipment so that the actual time a human operator was online with a customer dropped significantly. Did they then increase the “free” call allowance? HAH! When was the last time you got a free telephone number from a telephone company operator, or even one of their voice-recognition computers?
They say that those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it. But nowadays I sometimes feel like I’m surrounded by stupid people – the history of how phone and cable companies promise the moon and stars, then do nothing but raise rates, is so recent that it would be hard to overlook, yet people continue to believe the crap that the phone and cable company PR and advertising departments crank out. If, in this day and age, you really think that phone or cable companies have your best interest at heart by imposing bandwidth caps, then you have to be among the stupidest people on this planet. If you really are in that group, and what I just said offends you, don’t let the door hit you on the way out – you don’t deserve to be a reader of this blog.