Surging Internet Use Strains Phone System

The unrelenting growth of the Internet computer network is severely straining the nation’s telecommunications system, causing local phone service failures in some areas and perpetual “brownouts” on the computer network.

The congestion is especially acute in California, which has a higher proportion of Internet users than any other region of the country. A recent study by Pacific Telesis in the Silicon Valley found that 16% of local telephone calls did not connect, yielding either a “fast busy” signal or nothing at all.

PacTel added capacity in the area, bringing the number of unconnected calls down to 1%, the average throughout its network. But company officials warn that such overloads could become more common as thousands of new users continue to log on each month--and several areas of Los Angeles are now on a “watch” list for overload problems.

Bellcore, the joint research arm of the regional Bell telephone companies, has found similar slowdowns in major metropolitan areas on the East Coast, and in some suburban areas as well.

“We’re coming close to gridlock,” says Amir Atai, director of network and traffic performance at Bellcore. “It won’t make a difference for the person who is already online, but what about the next user who is trying to make a 911 call?”

Life is no bowl of cybercherries for those who manage to successfully log in, either. Users of the Internet’s World Wide Web especially are faced with seemingly interminable delays as they send e-mail or attempt to navigate around the network that frustrated cognoscenti refer to as the “World Wide Wait.”

Experts say the problems will only get worse as technology allows for massive audio and video files to be more easily transferred and Internet access providers move to a pricing system that allows users unlimited time online for a flat rate.

America Online, the No. 1 online service, announced such a plan this week. A Bellcore study found that subscribers to Internet services stay online twice as long when they are charged a flat rate as they do when charged by the hour.

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The root of the telephone network capacity problem lies in the fact that Internet calls are far longer than the voice calls that the phone network was designed to handle. PacTel found that an average Internet call was 20 minutes long, compared with 4 minutes for an average phone call. Ten percent of Internet calls were six hours or longer.

The peak time for phone system usage has also switched to the 7-11 p.m. period because of evening Internet use--stressing networks designed around weekday calling peaks.

PacTel says it now has 16 switching offices “on watch” for overloads, two in Los Angeles, one in Orange County and the majority in Silicon Valley. The phone company estimates it will cost between $25 million to $100 million in 1997 to avoid such blockages.

Pacific Telesis and the other regional Bell companies say there are no technical barriers to solving the capacity problems--but that antiquated regulations are making it uneconomical for them to do so.

Under guidelines established in the early 1980s, Internet service providers are exempted from paying the additional fees that long-distance companies pay local providers for calls that are transferred to another network. Netcom Communications, for example, which is responsible for much of the traffic surge in Silicon Valley, pays the standard monthly business rate of $15 per line, despite the huge volume of calls flowing into its modem banks.

Those regulations were designed to protect online providers when the industry was in its infancy, and the local phone companies argue that they no longer apply. The Federal Communications Commission is expected to consider higher rates for Internet service providers before the end of the year.

But that would significantly alter the economics of the Internet, which has traditionally allowed users to reach people across the world for the price of a local phone call and a low monthly subscription fee.

Internet providers and computer industry lobbyists contend that the solution should be to implement new technology that would offer users faster access--which they would then pay for--rather than simply expanding the traditional voice system and asking them to pay more for the same service.

“The point is not to go levy a tax on the Internet service providers which would just drive up the cost of Internet connectivity,” says Paul Misener, telecommunications policy manager for Intel Corp. “The only reason [new, high-speed] technologies like ADSL aren’t being deployed is because this the local phone industry isn’t competitive.”

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Higher-speed technologies such as ADSL, or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Link, ISDN and T1 phone lines would divert Internet traffic away from the switched phone system and funnel it directly onto special data networks.

One of the reasons the Internet is so cheap compared with voice calls is because traffic on these data networks is broken down into small packets, using phone lines more efficiently. While one voice conversation monopolizes an entire line, data packets from hundreds of different users can traverse the same line at the same time.

“We were going along just fine until we had the explosion in Internet and online services,” said Ralph Parker, who studies the Internet market for PacTel. “But our network wasn’t designed for this.”

The traffic problems within the Internet transcend mere telecommunications capacity issues. With an annual growth rate of 10% a month and a management structure that got even more anarchic last year when the National Science Foundation relinquished control of its major arteries, the network faces organizational as well as technical hurdles.

Fed up with the sloth-like network, a group of 34 universities agreed this month to create a new national network for higher education, to be called Internet II, which will offer higher speeds and more reliable service than the current Internet.

“The bogging down will get worse before it gets better,” said Bob Metcalfe, a columnist for the trade publication InfoWorld who has predicted the Net’s impending collapse. “But adding capacity would be a step in the right direction.”