A few weeks ago, Nemertes Research reconstituted a 2008 report claiming the Internet was about to run out of bandwidth, and that looming brown outs would be hitting us any day now. Telecom lobbyists use this data to argue that if they don't get what they want (less regulation, no net neutrality laws, no price controls, huge subsidies and tax credits, less consumer protection, metered billing) we'll soon all be crying over our clogged pipes.

The Nemertes prediction of a looming bandwidth apocalypse is highly contested by network capacity experts, who note that the Internet's growth is actually quite manageable with only modest infrastructure upgrades. But the idea of a collapsing Internet is simply too compelling for many lazy journalists, who enjoy penning very exciting but inaccurate stories like this recent one in the UK's Sunday Times. Says the Times:Scary! Except Nemertes analyst Ted Ritter, quoted in the article, stopped by our forums to note that the paper "took great liberty" with his quotes, and "put a sensationalist spin on Nemertes research." Apparently making the rounds, Ritter also stopped over at Techdirt to proclaim that actually, the Internet will scale quite well -- with the exception of the last mile. That's not really news, nor is it what Nemertes had previously claimed.

So it's strange when Techdirt directs our attention to a new piece at Network World again proclaiming that the broadband "sky is falling." The article was written by Nemertes analyst Johna Till Johnson, though you might not know that since Network World doesn't bother to tell you. Despite Ritter's claim that it's the media that's solely responsible for hyper-inflating Nemertes' claims, Johnson does a pretty good job all by herself, taking a series of unrelated points and using them as evidence that the Internet apocalypse has already arrived:Again, quite scary! Except that YouTube doesn't invest in certain countries because, as the New York Times noted last month, it's not always profitable to do so due to low ad revenues. Apparently, people in low-income countries have more important things to worry about than buying crap. That has absolutely nothing to do with the Nemertes prediction of global Internet brownouts caused by unmanageable capacity demand.

As for caps and overages, carriers like Time Warner Cable, who are trying to implement low caps and high overages, aren't doing so because of bandwidth constraints. They've provided no data to support that argument. Caps and overages are being implemented because carriers want to use their power in uncompetitive markets to protect TV revenues from Internet video and please investors, who like the idea of you paying more for the same (or less) product while the costs to provide that product continue to drop.

It's a little difficult to take Nemertes seriously when their data is only used by AT&T lobbyists looking to scare lawmakers into doing their bidding, and lazy journalists eager to get hits for sensationalist crap. It's even harder to take them seriously when their positions on the severity of their already dubious crisis seem to vacillate repeatedly. Hyperbolic editorials using completely unrelated data really doesn't help their cause much, either.

I suppose settling the debate is easy enough. We can just wait until next year when, according to Nemertes, the Internet is supposed to start grinding to a halt. When it continues to function perfectly thanks to the ingenuity of network engineers everywhere, Nemertes can issue everybody an apology, right?