Vampires shadow Telecom

By CHRIS BARTON

You won't believe what I'm about to tell you. There are vampires in broadband land and Telecom wants to drive stakes through their hearts.

It's not really the vampires' fault. They're just doing what comes naturally and enjoying the rich pickings Telecom has provided. But Telecom is pretending the vampires don't exist and is punishing all its broadband customers as though they are all blood-sucking fiends.

I'm talking about downloading on the internet - specifically music and videos via file-sharing networks such as KaZaA and Grokster.

Vampires are the relatively small number of users who suck down files 24 hours a day - by leaving their computers permanently on and by using tricky software to automatically feed their insatiable appetite for free music, bootleg DVDs and porn.

It's not a new problem. Vampires have been on the net in New Zealand since ihug introduced flat rate dial-up access in the late nineties. Back then the problem was the greedy few staying online round the clock, hogging access lines so others couldn't connect and downloading so much that the owners - the Wood brothers - had conniptions.

The problem was sorted by kicking off some of the worst offenders and by introducing automatic disconnections after being online too long. But that was then. No one cares too much if you're permanently online using dial-up these days.

The Wood brothers learned from that experience and ihug's broadband services have an upper limit for time spent online or caps on the amount you can download.

But Telecom is just learning about the havoc vampires can wreak as they invade its internet provider Xtra's unlimited 128Kbps Jetstart service, which has about 12,000 users paying a flat rate of $65 a month.

The problem is the cost of bandwidth - specifically international bandwidth, mainly from the United States.

No one will tell you exactly how much it costs, but let's say it's 5c per megabyte. That would cost Telecom $50 for every international gigabyte downloaded.

This is just a guess - not all usage is international and the cost of bandwidth within New Zealand is negligible.

But the problem gets very large when you realise how much vampires download. In theory on Jetstart's 128Kbps always-on connection, about 1.3 gigabytes per day is feasible. That's about 40Gb a month.

Contrast that with my family's Jetstart usage, which is on average just under 1Gb a month.

So what is Xtra doing? Rather than dealing with the real problem it is penalising all its Jetstart customers by restricting the amount of bandwidth they can get on file-sharing services.

My experiments show that on KaZaA I get on average download speed of less than one kilobyte per second (KBps) - and at times as low as .02KBps - when I should be getting between 8KBps and 15KBps.

What this means is that a one-megabyte file that previously downloaded in a few minutes is taking hours.

Xtra has admitted in the press it is "managing" file-sharing bandwidth, but hasn't communicated directly to its customers. In my view this is breach of contract. Having a service that limits the most basic of internet services - downloading - to speeds slower than dial-up isn't something I signed up to.

Xtra counterclaims that using file-sharing services is in breach of its terms and conditions, namely that: "You must not run servers, use static IP addresses or provide public information service via a computer connected via this plan [Jetstart]."

But this is a smokescreen. Even when I disable KaZaA's upload ability to share with others, I still get almost no bandwidth to download.

And while it may be possible to argue that, technically, KaZaA and other file-sharing software are acting as servers when they provide files for upload, they're not like websites.

To be consistent Xtra should be limiting bandwidth used by Microsoft Update and Messenger software which act as servers too. It's also not the real problem, because uploads to the US and elsewhere are much cheaper than downloads.

Internet provider Xtra, in limiting downloading of free music, videos and porn, is also taking on the role of censor and police. So what's Xtra to do to avoid being labelled the Taleban of internet providers in New Zealand?

It should start dealing with the real problem - the vampires. Already the company has hinted at doing just that by introducing a monthly cap of around 6Gb for Jetstart users.

But it also needs to get more sophisticated about managing bandwidth - differentiating between the almost-no-cost New Zealand and low-cost Australian variety and the more expensive US kind.

Sources say it's in the process of doing that, too, with bandwidth management software called Packeteer.

But it needs to do more. The reason international bandwidth is so expensive is, ironically, that we don't use enough of it.

If there was more use in New Zealand then Telecom could negotiate better prices for bulk bandwidth from the US - and start using some of the vast untapped capacity of the Southern Cross cable. But to do that it has to create demand - and at the prices it's charging at present, that's never going to happen.

In setting download caps Telecom needs to make sure it knows how much is enough.

Broadband is a bit like an addiction. Once you've enjoyed its pleasures you always want more. While a 6Gb cap may be okay today, tomorrow is a different story.

Xtra also needs to see the vampires as not all bad.

They're the users pushing the envelope of what the internet can do and in a few years, I suspect, it will be they who will be driving the knowledge economy.

* Email Chris Barton