Gobbling up gigs

Clint Armstrong, a software engineering student at Liberty University, got an unexpected phone call from Comcast in December.

A customer service representative told him his account had been flagged for excessive use. Armstrong recorded the call.

His modem, he was told, had consumed more than 400 gigabytes of bandwidth in one month.

That's a lot of Internet usage: like sending millions of e-mails. Armstrong uses the Internet a lot to download movies and files to program, as well as for voice chats and online gaming. But the number surprised him.

Armstrong was offered the chance to upgrade to a business account, with more bandwidth. If he was flagged for excessive use again, the customer service representative told him, his account would be cut off for a year.

For the past few years, Comcast, the cable provider for Lynchburg, has contacted the heaviest bandwidth users on its high-speed Internet service to warn them to cut back or be cut off.

Charlie Douglas, director of Comcast's corporate communications, said the company has 13 million Internet subscribers, and less than one percent are flagged for excessive use.

Comcast owes it to other customers to limit activities that use so much bandwidth that it slows the network, he said.

But in addition to asking excessive users to scale back their usage, Comcast has been accused of managing its network to slow down certain online services.

In October, the Associated Press conducted a nationwide test and wrote that Comcast actively interfered with file transfers from the popular peer-to-peer BitTorrent service.

According to some critics, that violates "Net neutrality," the principle that the companies providing Internet access should not discriminate against or block legal content.

Comcast officials say their network management might slow down heavy traffic, but does not block traffic. "Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any Web sites or online applications," said David Cohen, executive vice president.

Two weeks ago, the Federal Communications Commission held a meeting in Boston with Comcast and technology and legal experts to learn more about network management practices, and what could be considered appropriate.

The FCC received a petition in January from Vuze, an online entertainment content service, asking the agency to create a set of regulations to govern network management.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers are looking for ways to preserve Net neutrality.U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus, believes competition would solve part of the problem.

But there's a monopoly on Internet service in most markets. Goodlatte said most people have only one or two choices for high-speed access.

"If you actually had just hundreds of competitors then I don't know that that would be a problem at all," but "if we allow a limited number of companies to control the pipe … that strikes me as an antitrust violation," he said in a December interview.

He has asked members of the House Judiciary Committee to consider addressing net neutrality in antitrust laws.

"One of the great things about the Internet is the competitiveness of it, the wide array of choices that people have online," Goodlatte said.

U.S. Rep Ed Markey (D-Mass) chairs the House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet. In February, he introduced a law requiring the FCC to investigate competitiveness and consumer protection in Internet access.

On Feb. 25, during the FCC's meeting with Comcast, Markey told the commissioners, "the Internet is as much mine and yours as it is Verizon's, AT&T's or Comcast's."

David Baum, president of JetBroadband, said his company and others don't try to completely own the Internet and control its traffic.

"The industry has no interest … in being the gatekeeper in what people do with their connectivity," he said. "That's the farthest thing from our goals.

"I think those fears are overblown," he said.

However, the Internet can't be an all-you-can-eat bandwidth buffet either.

Based in Stamford, Conn., JetBroadband provides cable and Internet access in Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell counties, as well as much of Southside Virginia.

Buying, building out and upgrading these networks has cost the company millions of dollars.

"Not unlike power consumption or water consumption … people should pay for what they use," Baum said.

JetBroadband offers tiered packages allowing different amounts of network traffic.

Comcast does not offer such a service at this time.

"We should be paid for traffic that is on our network. And we are currently being paid, in some cases, less than we feel we are entitled to," Baum said.

"I've got customers that are using 850 gig a month in a package that allows for 60 gig," Baum said.

He said more than 200 JetBroadband users consistently exceed their bandwidth limits.

But users are only half the problem: Content providers online make use of the network to transmit large files to customers.

Though it's not currently an industry practice to charge the content providers, Baum said it would make sense.

"Are we looking for some sort of compensation from the Googles and the YouTubes- Yeah, I think that's the logical way to go," he said. "I don't think we should ask the customers to pay for everything along the way.

"We went out there and made investments for millions and millions of dollars to make that possibility available."

Bandwidth bandits

Here are a few kinds of programs that can drive up bandwidth usage a lot more than checking e-mail:

Streaming video
• Several services allow users to watch TV on their computers. One such service, Joost.com, warns users that it can eat up to one gigabyte in just a few hours.

File sharing
• Programs such as BitTorrent boast they can boost download speeds by directly connecting users. That "peer-to-peer" connection can take up several lanes of network traffic.

Internet phone
• Vonage uses a broadband Internet connection to make phone calls. Skype and other programs can make calls from a computer. Talking more than a few hours per month on a high-quality setting can run up network usage.

Intensive graphics
• Google Earth allows users to zoom in on the globe and see satellite images of city streets and mountain terrains. But loading a high-quality image can put a spike in bandwidth.