DaytonDailyNews.com

Your speed on the Internet is much like your speed on the interstate: it depends on the time of day and how much other traffic you run into.

But on the Internet, there's a factor hidden from the consumer — carriers can assign priorities to your data that slow or speed its passage through switches and hubs. You may not notice the difference while exchanging e-mails or surfing the Web, but for more intensive bandwidth uses, such as streaming movies or music, a low priority can result in choppy video or audio.

Education technology adviser Roger Carlsen of Wright State University said the time has come for more transparency and accountability in the services provided by carriers like Time Warner and AT&T, especially since they have said they're moving toward a tiered billing system that charges heavier users higher rates.

"You may pay for a fast link, but there's no guarantee you'll go at those speeds," Carlsen said.

Consumers also have the right to know how much bandwidth they're using if they're going to be charged extra for exceeding their usage caps, he said. Time Warner is testing a tiered pricing system in Beaumont, Texas, that charges $30 per month for up to 5 gigabytes of use, $45 for 20 gigabytes and $55 for 40 gigabytes. Those who exceed the cap are charged $1 for every extra gigabyte of use.

Government regulation

To protect consumers, government regulators will have to monitor carriers in the same way "gas pumps are inspected and certified so that consumers get what they are paying for," said local Internet security consultant Bryan Fite.

The casual Internet user who simply sends e-mail messages, finds directions or reads the news won't come near exceeding the caps. But industry analysts fear that usage pricing could put a damper on some of the fastest growing segments of the Internet — videoconferencing by businesses and consumer viewing of movies, TV shows and "convergent" services like YouTube that cleverly mix text, audio and video.

"The Internet has been a huge, huge economic development tool," said Tom Ireland, chief technology officer of the Miami Valley Communications Council. With flat billing, "the little guy could compete with the big guy on a fair playing field. But if you start metering the Internet, does that mean the person who pays you more gets preferential treatment?"

Ireland said he's especially concerned about the impact on "the YouTube generation coming along. There are a lot of amateurs and small professionals making great use of video today and transmitting it across the world" at low cost.

Return to bad old days

Critics of usage pricing say it could signal a return to the bad old days when dial-up services like TelNet charged by the byte and hour of the day. Then, only the most diehard Net surfers were willing to sign up. Consumer use of the Internet didn't really take off until 1995, when carriers introduced unlimited usage plans.

Media giants like NBC, Disney and Netflix worry that caps will discourage average home users from watching movies and TV shows on their computers. Even a 40-gigabyte cap, they say, could have an impact when a high-definition episode of a TV show can use up to a gigabyte or a DVD-quality download from Netflix can eat 5 gigabytes. Internet phone services like Skype and Vonage also could help put people over the limit.

But carriers say the Internet today is basically a text-based system that was never designed to handle the growing volume of video and music traffic. "Over all, broadband use is surging," said Bob Beasley, a spokesman for AT&T. Based on current trends, "total bandwidth in the AT&T network will increase by four times over the next three years."

Someone must pay

Someone has to pay for the network upgrades to handle that increased traffic, carriers say. Why not the heaviest users?

Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley said 95 percent of its customers use less than the 40-gigabyte cap. "The only ones who will exceed the cap are the heaviest users" who account for nearly half of the total bandwidth usage, he said.

Many of the worst "bandwidth hogs" are downloading numerous video and audio files illegally, or swapping them with other computer users via peer-to-peer, or P2P, file sharing, he said.

"There's one guy in New York City who is downloading the equivalent of 1,500 high-definition movies a month," Dudley said. "We have no idea what he's doing with them, but he's certainly not watching all of them himself. He can't."

"It's not a simple, clear-cut issue," said Fite, a heavy Internet user. He doesn't like the idea of usage pricing for consumers but unless the government subsidizes the modernization of the Internet, "where are we going to get the money for that investment?"

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2437 or jdebrosse@DaytonDailyNews.com.