Providers of high speed broadband love to talk about how they're providing private networks that shouldn't be regulated at all, but they tend to ignore the fact that they usually rely on government subsidies in the form of rights of way -- the legal ability to dig the trenches (or string cables on poles) to run the key infrastructure. Now, of course, we've heard of various muni-broadband projects, but one community in the UK apparently got so fed up with waiting for a big broadband provider to bring service to their village that they not only started setting up their own system, but they literally got dozens of residents to help them start digging the 51 mile-long trench where the fiber optic cable that connects them to the wider internet will lie. Talk about taking matters into your own hands...

As was somewhat expected, this week Comcast announced its plans to offer Xfinity video on demand via the Xbox 360... which will require customers to subscribe to both Xfinity TV and the broadband service, meaning that this isn't a solution for getting around your cable subscription (of course, because Comcast doesn't want you ditching your cable TV). But what's getting much more attention is the announcement that such streaming video won't count against Comcasts' broadband caps, raising some significant questions concerning whether or not Comcast is following the FCC's open internet rules -- the same rules that were put in place to stop Comcast from degrading certain services in favor of others. Comcast, for it part, insists that the rules don't apply to this VOD service, since it's coming over its private network, rather than the public internet, but it's certainly tiptoeing along a fairly fine line. I think the bigger issue is why the cap exists in the first place. But, in the long run, Comcast is definitely trying to back its way into being able set up "most favored nation" status with certain providers, which really does impinge on the internet's basic end-to-end principles.

Dan Berninger has launched an ambitious program (for which I've agreed to sign on as a supporter), called the 550 Challenge. The idea is straightforward: see if we can work towards getting every single person on the planet connected to the internet by February 3, 2018 -- the 550th anniversary of Johannes Guttenberg's death:

The 550 Challenge - the world borderless by February 3, 2018 - promotes the expansion of Internet access to include everyone on earth by the 550th anniversary of Johannes Guttenberg's death. Gutenberg died on February 3, 1468 in relative obscurity before the printing press got credit for ending the Dark Age and setting in motion 200 years of accelerated progress in art, literature, and learning known as the Renaissance. The 550 Challenge seeks to realize the promise of the Internet as the basis for a new Communication Renaissance.

With economic turmoil around the globe, and various governments putting together all sorts of "make work" projects to try to boost the economy, Berninger (and those of us who have signed on) argue that nothing can help the economy like increasing communication among everyone on the planet:

A dramatic expansion of communication seems likely to prove more affordable than infrastructure projects, energy related interventions, and war. The nature of communication technology tends to shape the course of human affairs, because communication represents a key input to the global economy. Half of all energy gets consumed by moving people from one place to another, so improving communication can help addresss global warming and geo-political tensions generated by energy consumption.

A telephone call does not require a Green Card or engage the TSA, so communication technologies can lessen the dislocations associated with immigration, emigration, and the arbitrary power of birthplace over opportunity. The Arab Spring illustrates the threat communication poses to tyranny and utility for linking people across lines of conflict. Risks exist with any technology just as roads benefit people seeking to rob banks as well as the general public. The 550 Challenge merely asserts connecting everyone offers less downside risk than the disconnected status quo.

Connecting everyone on earth within six years seems ambitious, but it requires merely sustaining the existing pace of cell phone and Internet expansion. The process of connecting people may require first finding sources for food, water, and shelter as well as navigating dangerous conflict over borders, but the challenges nonetheless do not compare to the World War's of the 20th century both of which played out in less than six years.

It's an ambitious program, but the world needs ambitious programs, and this is one that seems worth supporting and doing anything we can to help it achieve its goals.

ISPs and cell phone companies have long been known for raising the spectre of the "bandwidth hog" in order to justify data caps or bandwidth throttling. Considering most ISPs are also television providers, throttling and capping data usage helps push some customers back towards their TV sets. (Depending on how many other eggs are in the company's basket, this also helps push them back into theaters and tilts their heads back to regular old radio, as these caps make streaming services very unattractive.)

Karl Bode at DSL Reports has finally obtained some data which confirms what many of us had suspected all along: the Bandwidth Hog is a convenient bogeyman rather than an actual being. Analysts Benoit Felton and Herman Wagter managed to talk an "anonymous mid size DSL company from North America" into sharing its data on customer usage. Not surprisingly, despite their open invitation to the ISPs to contest their "disruptive user" argument, no other broadband/DSL service offered to provide any data, suggesting they're already well aware of what usage numbers actually show.

In a blog post, Felten notes that the pair took real user data for all customers connected to a single aggregation link and analyzed the network statistics on data consumption -- in five minute time increments -- over a whole day. What they found is that capping ISPs often don't really understand customer usage patterns, and are confusing data consumption (how much data was downloaded over a whole period) and bandwidth usage (how much bandwidth capacity was used at any given point in time).

What they discovered is data that runs in stark contrast to a lot of the claims put out there by some familiar, larger ISPs when justifying caps and overages. Among the pair's findings is that the top 1% of data consumers (which they call "very heavy consumers," instead of the already adversarial "hog") account for 20% of the overall consumption.

Looking deeper into the data, they also found that about 61% of very heavy data consumers download 95% of the time or more, but only 5% of those who download at least 95% of the time are very heavy data consumers. While 83% of very heavy data consumers are amongst the top 1% of bandwidth users during at least one five minute time window at peak hours, they only represent 14.3% of said Top 1% of users at those times.

That's a lot of percentages and percentages of percentages. Fortunately, a commenter at DSL Reports was able to use the "dreaded" highway analogy to simplify things:

1% of vehicle drivers on the road travel a disproportionate amount of miles compared to the average driver. But they are on the road all the time. Most of the time they are on the road there is no rush hour congestion.The heavy drivers are likely to be involved in rush hour traffic jams, but only represent a small, not terribly relevant, fraction of total drivers in the traffic jam.Limiting the amount of miles a driver can drive, does nothing to widen the roads and little to keep people off the roads during traffic jams, thus does not help with congestion.

In other words, internet usage tends to be heaviest at certain points of the day, and installing caps or throttling supposedly heavy users does nothing to relieve that congestion. Instead, it punishes users across the board by hitting some of them with additional fees and offering very little in the way of improving connection or speed for the rest of the users online during these "traffic jams."

Felten concludes that ISPs themselves need to better understand the difference between data usage and bandwidth consumption, or face driving their customers to more reasonable competitors. That's assuming consumers have a choice, given caps exist in many markets largely due to no competition.

That's the real problem. For many people, there are few options. And most of the ISPs are more than happy to install caps and overage fees, especially if someone in the market is already doing just that. Bode also notes the adversarial relationship with their customers that the ISPs are creating through the usage of terms like "bandwidth hog" or "disruptive user." Rather than look into improving infrastructure, they'd much rather vilify certain paying customers in order to deflect attention away from their service limitations.

Karl Bode expands on this:

It would also be naive to assume many of the larger ISPs -- stocked with number crunchers and network analysts -- don't already know everything Felten stated. However, there's a reason that ISPs don't like bandying real, raw data about -- and it's because there's a few large carriers that like to use bogus science to justify anti-consumer behavior, most recently with AT&T's announcement of caps and overages for DSL and U-Verse users. When asked to prove that these caps and overages were necessary, AT&T couldn't -- something ignored by general tech press coverage of the move.

As we've noted repeatedly, most carriers impose caps and overages claiming it's due to either network congestion or financial necessity. In realty, caps and overages are implemented by carriers that simply want to jack up the cost of bandwidth so they can protect TV revenues from Internet video by making Internet video more costly and less appealing. The financial "necessity" of moving away from the flat-rate pricing model is proven false quarterly by earnings reports.

While it's nice to finally have some data on hand to debunk the "bandwidth hog" myth, most ISPs will be able to dismiss it as not being representative of their customers' usage patterns. After all, they're still refusing to provide any data to back up their claims. In areas without competition, this myth will still be used as a scapegoat for everything from hard caps to lousy connections.

For the better part of a decade, we've been arguing that the main problem with broadband in the US, and the main reason we remain so far behind many other countries, is the stunning lack of competition. The broadband field is dominated by just a few players, and they always seem to be consolidating, rather than leading to new competition. In fact, we've seen that when competition decreases, the efforts to expand broadband suddenly seem to go away. Competition drives better broadband. It really is that simple. The FCC has been paying lip service to this idea for years, but has never actually done anything. The latest is that it's launched a Connect2Compete program. Yes, it has the word "compete" in there, but an analysis of the plan shows that it's got absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with actual competition.

Much of the plan is an attempt to reform the absolute boondoggle that is the Universal Service Fund -- a mysterious fund with little oversight that often just seems to end up propping up telcos' bottom lines rather than leading to anything like universal service. Fixing the USF would be a good idea, but apparently the "plan" doesn't look like it'll do anything useful:

The primary thrust of the project involves the agency's plan for USF reform, the specifics of which have yet to be fully disclosed but are believed to be largely pulled from AT&T and Verizon lobbyist recommendations. The FCC's "Connect to Compete" website insists this reform could net "$1 billion or more per year in benefits for wireless consumers alone." However, unmentioned is the fact the plan will likely drive up prices for consumer broadband bills by raising the cap on USF fees charged by carriers above $6.50 per month.

What would consumers get for this money? Digging into the telco's USF plan, there's absolutely nothing there that suggests serious broadband expansion beyond what they'd already planned with upcoming LTE efforts. There's also absolutely nothing to suggest the FCC has a handle on auditing the USF and e-Rate program. $25 billion has been poured into large and small telco coffers over the years (in addition to billions in additional subsidies), and yet somehow our libraries still lack adequate bandwidth.

Readers should be able to conclude where most of this money actually went. Ignored by the FCC and the press is the fact that all the state and federal subsidies doled out to phone companies by now could have easily wired every U.S. home with fiber to the home several times over. AT&T and Verizon should not be getting another penny in government subsidies, yet the FCC's USF reform will almost-certainly involve additional handouts you'll be paying for in the form of higher broadband bills.

So there we are. No effort at increased competition and better broadband. But higher fees going into a boondoggle fund that will almost certainly end up in the coffers of our two largest (and super profitable) telco companies.

This is hardly a surprise, given that the Sarkozy administration appears to believe that copyright is more important than all other human rights but apparently, as part of a telecom bill in France, the administration added a clause that forces all French ISPs to have clauses concerning copyright infringement in their terms of service, which also force ISPs to ignore some basic principles of net neutrality. What's interesting here is that Sarkozy didn't even go through Parliament to do this, but rather made use of some process called "transposition" that allowed him to add certain clauses to the Telecoms Act, outside of the Parliamentary process.

Over the summer, the French government has published its transposition of the Telecoms Package. The Sarkozy regime has used a controversial manipulation of the legislative process to get the transposition into law without going through the French Parliament. It includes provisions which contradict the French government’s stated objective of protecting net neutrality. Moreover, it includes a copyright obligation on ISPs to support France’s 3-strikes law.

Sarkozy even ignored the government's advisory committee on the digital economy, which explicitly came out against some of the provisions that were added. Of major concern is the fact that the required terminology being forced into ISP contracts, says that ISPs will restrict certain services for those accused of infringement. As the article notes, this could include things like blocking Skype, something that would go against basic net neutrality principles, which the French Parliament has said it supports. So, in yet another effort to put draconian copyright law ahead of all else, it looks like Sarkozy has routed completely around Parliament, slipped some extra rules into a Telecoms Package, and in the process made it clear that France officially has no respect for the principles of net neutrality.

It's really amazing that companies don't recognize that taking away features to charge for them almost never goes over well. Adding features that can be charged for will work, but removing features that were free and widely used is rarely a good idea. It appears that Verizon is still learning that lesson. The company apparently provides some hosting space for all of its customers, and until recently allowed subscribers to access that space via FTP. However, it recently announced that it was doing away with FTP access and instead, users were now forced to make use of Verizon's own clunky web tools interface. That's quite a nuisance for some users.

But where this gets more interesting is that it appears Verizon is simply lying about the reasons why. The company is telling users it's for "security" reasons. But... while it's discontinuing FTP for its regular subscribers, those who pay up for a higher level hosting plan (starting at $5.95 per month) seem to still be able to use FTP. In other words, it's only a security problem if you're not paying -- suggesting that the "security" is more about Verizon's revenue than the security of your content. And while it's true that unencrypted FTP can have some security issues (mainly on untrusted networks), there are ways to deal with that with secure, encrypted FTP offerings.

On Tuesday, we questioned John Sununu and Harold Ford Jr.'s assertion that Netflix was somehow getting a "free ride" on the internet these days, by asking if they'd be willing to swap broadband bills with the company for the rest of the year. On Wednesday we upped the ante, by offering to give each man $500 if they'd pay Netflix's broadband bill for the final quarter of the year. $500 would come from Derek Kerton who suggested it, and another $500 would come from us at Techdirt. Since then, a few more people have contacted me and offered (anonymously) to put up another $1,500 between them. So we're now up to $2,500 total (or $1,250 each) if John Sununu and Harold Ford Jr. agree to pay Netflix's broadband bills for the months of October, November and December. Or, you know, they could admit that their op-ed was misleading claptrap. Of course, their failure to accept this "free" money sorta makes that statement for them.

So we just wrote about a truly ridiculous opinion piece by two ex-politicians, John Sununu and Harold Ford Jr., claiming that Netflix somehow didn't pay for its bandwidth. They complained about the supposed "free ride" that Netflix was getting. As one of our commenters pointed out, this is sort of like the "free ride" that Ford Motor Company gets from the highway system.

But Derek Kerton may have had the best idea of all, noting that Sununu and Ford will almost certainly ignore our request that they swap their broadband bills with Netflix. Derek suggests we up the ante, and offer to actually give Sununu and Ford some money if they agree to pay Netflix's broadband bills for the rest of 2011. He's putting up $500 and we at Techdirt will match his offer and put up another $500. So, that's $1,000 for Sununu and Ford Jr. if they're willing to pay Netflix's braodband bill. Hell, we'll give them some time to think it over, and say they only have to pay for the last quarter of the year. If they'll pay Netflix's broadband bills for October, November and December, we'll give them $1,000 ($500 each). Some others in the comments have also offered to chip in as well, so perhaps we can raise the ante a bit more.

So here we go. According to Sununu and Ford Jr., this is "free money" that we're offering them. Will they take it? Will they agree to pay for Netflix and its very cheap "free rider" broadband bill? I'm not holding my breath.

Yet another country is considering a three strikes law, kicking people off the internet based on accusations (not convictions) of copyright infringement. This time, it's Australia, and as always, the question of who is a stakeholder in this discussion seems to involve the government assuming that it's one party and one party only: the entertainment industry. They're the ones "advising" the government on this. And while some ISPs have been invited to be present at a meeting, no one actually representing consumer interests has yet to be invited.