Study Says Net Isn’t Crashing Phone System
WASHINGTON — The growing mass of Internet users have paid their fair share to local telephone companies and pose little threat to the phone system, according to a study by a group of Internet and computer companies.
The coalition presented the report Wednesday to counter studies released last year by local phone companies seeking to justify new access fees for Internet usage. Those studies found that Internet usage threatened to overwhelm the system.
“The Internet is not crashing the telephone network,” Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Assn. of America, said at a news conference here.
“We are bringing the real facts to bear on a ‘problem’ that the phone companies have anecdotally created to protect their own interests,” said Miller, whose group is a member of the Internet Access Coalition.
The Federal Communications Commission said Dec. 24 that it had tentatively decided not to impose access fees on Internet providers similar to those paid by long-distance companies to local phone companies.
But the commission also asked for comments about the effect of the Internet on the phone system.
“Our findings clearly show that claims of phone network ‘congestion’ resulting from Internet traffic and predictions of a ‘meltdown’ are greatly exaggerated,” said Lee Selwyn, one of the study’s authors.
The study found that in 1995, consumers paid more than $1.4 billion for installation and use of 6 million second phone lines devoted to accessing the Internet or other online services. The study said an additional 8 million second lines were not primarily used for Internet access.
Local phone companies, some of which had not seen the new study, disputed Selwyn’s conclusions.
“To suggest that there is no real problem here is mind-boggling,” Bell Atlantic Corp. spokesman Harry Mitchell said. As Internet companies add huge numbers of phone lines to meet growing demand, “it does impact the capacity of the public telephone network.”
America Online Inc., for example, said recently that it would double the number of modems it has to connect with subscribers, to 400,000 by June.
But phone company studies considered only a few pieces of the phone system, focusing on switches between Internet service providers and the rest of the network, Selwyn said. While those few switches might be congested, capacity could be added inexpensively, he said.
The study also cited speeches by some phone company executives who have bragged about the additional revenue generated by increased Internet usage.
In the end, all sides agree that a technological solution could eliminate most congestion problems by separating calls carrying voice and data.
SBC Communications Inc., parent of Southwestern Bell, said last week that it would introduce such splitting technology at a cost of less than $100 million.
“Technological solutions are readily available,” said Paul Misener, chairman of the Internet coalition’s steering committee.
