Elvis Costello
Much like the subject of an Elvis Costello song, the FCC does its regulatory agenda a disservice with the release of its August 16 Technical Report that finds Internet bandwidth hogs use up to 25 percent of available bandwidth while representing only 1 percent of Internet users.

By Bruce Edward Walker

File under duh! The Federal Communications Commission Broadband Performance OBI Technical Paper No. 4, the report issued this month, isolates some very pertinent facts, which in the aggregate indicate its attempts to evade federal law in order to grab regulatory power over the Internet are utterly unjustified.

Among these important facts released by the FCC are:

1. Data hogs account for about 1 percent of residential Web users but 25 percent of all online traffic.

2. For 2009, the median Web surfer used about 2 gigabytes per month on home connections, while the average was 9 gigabytes.

3. The extreme difference between average and median data usage is principally due to a relatively small number of users who consume very large amounts of data each month–sometimes terabytes per month.

4. The most data-intensive 1 percent of residential consumers appear to account for roughly 25 percent of all traffic.

5. The top 3 percent generate 40 percent of traffic; the top 10 percent, 70 percent; and the top 20 percent generate 80 percent of all traffic.

6. While half of all users consume less than 2 GB per month, the last 6 percent of users consume more than 15 GB each month.

The FCC’s National Broadband Plan promulgates the goal of creating availability of 4 Mbps actual download speeds across the country, stating that ISPs typically deliver only half of the speed they claim.

Additional findings include penetration:

1. 72 percent of U.S. households have Internet connections.

2. The average Internet user has been online for 10 years, and spends around an hour a day online.

3. By comparison, the FCC notes that the U.S. average TV viewing time is five hours a day.

All told, these are hardly compelling statistics supporting the FCC’s attempts to regulate the Internet. For more information, check out my August 20, 2010 podcast interview with Deborah D. McAdams based on her Television Broadcast article, “FCC Report Supplies Fuel for Net Neutrality Opponents.”

Originally published on the Heartland Institute’s Freedom Pub blog. Used with permission.