Free Broadband and File Sharing

This issue comes up a lot in my line of work.  95% of the folks that probably read this don't care about it--you can skip it.  If you are in the 5% that know techy talk and care, you can follow my ranting.

Here's the deal folks... Network equipment and leased circuits that carry your Internet traffic are FREAKIN' EXPENSIVE.  We're talking millions of dollars for a small network (to serve say 25,000 subscribers) in both one-time equipment costs and ongoing (monthly) circuit and maintenance cost.  To say nothing of Customer Care, Sales, Marketing, etc.  I know it totally feels like it just falls out of the sky, but there are literally thousands of miles of infrastructure and probably several thousand people involved in every bit you send.  It ain't free.

The only way anyone can make money in this game is to over sell.  That is you build a network capable of 100 meg of total service and then sell 5,000 one meg connections to your subscribers.  This is entirely legitimate as most users *never* tap one meg download speeds and if they do, they don't do it very long so the sharing works out.  5,000 customer get cheap reliable Internet service and they just have to agree to share it a little.  The service provider or carrier (that's me) has to monitor the total usage and upgrade when financially viable to do so.

Lately, more and more press has be coming up criticizing carriers for limiting heavy users on their networks.  Remember that in order for the cheap bandwidth model to work it has to be shared.  When a single user consumes 20 meg of the 100 meg aggregate, the other 4,999 subscribers are forced in to sharing the rest.  Everyone's performance goes down.  The responsible provider (that's me again) has to protect the bulk of its users (you) by limited what any one consumer can monopolize.

Yes, your equipment can peak out at 10 meg a second.  But that is NOT guaranteed to you 24x7.  If it were *guaranteed* then my 100 meg network would have to be a 50,000 meg network to physically guarantee that my 5,000 subscribers would *always* have their 10 meg peek available.  This network will, in fact, cost 1,000 times as much as the 100 meg network.  Soooo... if you were paying $40 a month for service before, you are going to have to pay $40,000 a month for it.

What? You can't afford $40,000 for high speed guaranteed porn, pirated movies, pirated songs and pirated software?  What? You don't do any of those things?

Of course not.  Most consumers don't do those things and because of this, they have reduced bandwidth needs.  The ability to burst occasionally is all you need.  It is only the 10% that "demand" their traffic be treated "fairly".  By fairly, they mean exclusive of anyone else's rights to use or the carrier to make any profit on it at all.  They are also screaming for this free and fair access so they can pirate their weaselly guts out.

This hypocrisy knows no bounds.  To pound the table about how it isn't "right" to restrict their bandwidth while they break the law, steal anything they can download and degrade network peformance for all.  Now even in that 10% there are relatively few who are the grossest offenders.  These individual literally down load terabytes of stolen software and media.  They do it for no reason other than bragging rights about their access to anything.  Many of these same individuals also download the vilest porn you can't imagine--often this stuff is deplorably illegal.  The good news here is that this type of traffic is easy to identify on the network.  As a carrier I can categorize it and shunt it off to rate-limited links that allow it, but keep it off the 100 meg shared by everyone (this isn't exactly how it works, but it is easier to explain this way).

Now I am a fair minded guy.  I do not care what weirdness you are in to.  The Internet has a place for you.  Go for it.  Do whatever you can do.  But you can not expect the rest of society to pay for your terabyte downloading habits.  This traffic needs to be controlled and should be controlled.  I do not even suggest that it should be banned--only restricted so that it can not overwhelm the rest of the network.  That is what carriers are doing today and they should.  The individuals that are banding together to some how legislate against the carriers are arguing that their right to download illegal media and software supersedes your right to affordable Internet access.  If you force a carrier to allow all traffic "unlimited" then that carrier is going to have upgrade and pass on the cost to you the 90% user who never (or rarely) taps their full line and never (or rarely) indulges in file sharing.

Go download what ever you conscious allows, but don't be dumb and make your carrier charge you more because of a small number of abusers.