Yet more predictions of bandwidth armageddon, this time by Harvard University's Elaine Kamarck in the Boston Globe. Kamarck insists that the current all you can eat pricing model must be shifted to a billing-by-the-byte model if the Internet is to survive. Either that, she argues, or carriers have to charge outfits like YouTube higher fees for access:We suppose the editorial would have you believe that AT&T and Comcast, already bloated with profits under the existing flat-rate business model, can afford multi-million-dollar CEO bonuses but are too cash-strapped to upgrade their infrastructure? Of course AT&T and Comcast are able to upgrade their network just fine, investors just want to boost revenue. Heavy new per-byte surcharges and "YouTube taxes" certainly accomplish this.

So far, the push for per-byte billing comes from the investment community, not actual network engineers. In fact some engineers will tell you that Internet growth is actually slowing. We recently sat down with a number of ISPs earlier this year and found no plans from any them to ditch flat-rate pricing.

Some would like to, but after looking at the failure of the model in Australia they're too afraid of consumer backlash to proceed. They have in effect made their advertising all-you-can-eat bed, and are now being forced to lie in it. If per-byte billing appears in the U.S., it will first show up in the form of cap overage fees (ie: pass your monthly cap, pay per MB).

As we've mentioned repeatedly, people whining about a looming capacity crunch are almost always pushing a political or financial agenda, be it a lobbyist gunning for less regulation (the Internet will collapse if we're heavily regulated!), an incumbent trying to create a new revenue stream (our network will implode if we can't tax YouTube!), or hardware vendors using FUD to sell traffic shaping hardware.

Don't be afraid of the bandwidth crunch bogeyman.