Qwest Admits That File Sharing Isn't Really A Traffic Burden

from the someone-didn't-get-the-memo dept

Lots of broadband providers have been blaming P2P file sharing for messing up the economics of broadband offerings. That is, they build the networks and set the prices based on a certain expected usage, and now they're claiming that this increased usage is costing them -- meaning that they need to put in place bandwidth caps or traffic shaping tools that get rid of the expected neutral network customers thought they were signing up for. Of course, the fact that they blame these new technologies (or want to charge them more) is ridiculous. They're basically admitting that they did a horrible job of forecasting future usage -- and ignored just about every historical trend that shows when you give people bandwidth, applications and services come along that allow them to use that bandwidth. However, for all this telco/cable whining about how horrible it is that their bandwidth is being sucked dry by a bunch of P2P file sharing kids... it would appear that someone didn't slip Qwest's CTO the memo that they're all supposed to be kicking up a big storm about how unfair it all is. He says that the rest of the industry is overstating the impact of peer-to-peer traffic: "I found that the traffic is well under what some in that industry say is happening. I mean, you hear claims of significant double-digit penetration of peer-to-peer traffic, and it was not near there."

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