Facebook's 300 million users have become a tempting audience for advertisers, and on the Internet that means lots of scammers have come along for the ride. Recently, Facebook has decided to take a harder line against scam offers showing up in Facebook advertisements and applications. Earlier this year, many Facebook users were deluged with advertisements that promoted easy money from the federal government's economic stimulus. After a period of time, Facebook decided enough was enough and went to work removing those ads from their system.

According top a recent announcement from the social networking giant, two ad networks have also been banned from their advertising system. Those networks were running deceptive ads, in Facebook's judgment. Facebook has also revised advertising policies regarding applications and has banned or brought into compliance around 100 applications with respect to scam advertisements.

Here's to a more scam-free social networking experience.

Each year, the federal government hands out billions of dollars to rural telephone providers. The basis of the policy - providing universal phone service across America in areas where service might not exist without the subsidy - was a good idea when it was set up. However, in recent years cable operators have begun to provide competitive phone service in many areas where the incumbent providers receive this government subsidy. Now, in a bid to help the government find a better use for its precious resources, the NCTA, the cable industry's trade association, has petitioned the FCC to reallocate unneeded phone subsidies toward providing universal broadband access.

The NCTA petition for rule making includes a study that details the broad penetration of unsubsidized competitive phone providers in rural areas with incumbent phone providers that receive the government subsidy. It proposes that the FCC create a process by which the competitive provider can petition the government to end the incumbent's subsidy based on the fact that the provider serves more than 75 percent of a defined area. States could also determine a competitive threshold is being met. Based on finding that phone competition exists, the FCC could end the subsidy for the competitive area.

NCTA's petition indicates that up to $2 billion in current unnecessary subsidies can be redirected toward providing unserved areas with broadband access.

"As the record in the National Broadband Plan proceeding demonstrates, achieving the congressional goal of universal access to broadband capability will be difficult to achieve without government programs dedicated to deploying facilities in unserved areas and promoting adoption by underserved populations. As the Commission considers NCTA's proposal to reduce support where it no longer is needed, it separately should consider whether, and how, it could redirect any savings from NCTA's proposal to provide targeted funding to programs that promote broadband deployment and adoption."

Under a bill passed yesterday by the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, Internet providers would be required to block Internet materials - emails, web sites and instant messages - that could be used to perpetrate financial fraud. As part of the proposed Investor Protection Act, Representative Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, the bill's sponsor, has proposed that ISPs block materials from financial fraudsters posing as legitimate investment offers. The relevant part of the bill states:

Any Internet service provider that, on or through a system or network controlled or operated by the Internet service provider, transmits, routes, provides connections for, or stores any material containing any misrepresentation (of the SIPC) shall be liable for any damages caused thereby, including damages suffered by the SIPC, if the Internet service provider...is aware of facts or circumstances from which it is apparent that the material contains a misrepresentation.

The SIPC is the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. It's a federal agency charged with protecting investors from securities fraud, and many Internet fraudsters use the SIPC's name in their communications to victims to give the impression that they are legitimate securities dealers. Currently, Representative Kanjorski's proposed blocking language is rather broad, not only including web pages but all network transmissions, which has raised concerns among providers about the technical viability of implementing such a block.  According to this article, Kanjorski is willing to come up with a compromise that is technically viable while still providing consumers some protections against Internet fraudsters.

Of course, the best protection for Internet users against financial fraud is common sense. If an offer sounds to good to be true or has tell-tale signs of a fraud, ignore it and avoid clicking on links in suspicious email.

The European Union is set to approve an omnibus set of new regulations when it comes to the rights of Internet users across that continent. Called the Telecoms Reform Package, it is set to deal with issues that range from protections for copyright holders to number porting requirements to the right of citizens to have access to the Internet. While the legislation sets forth that access to the Internet is a fundamental right in European countries, it allows each country to set forth procedures for blocking Internet access for copyright pirates - based on a "prior fair and impartial procedure."

Much of the motivation for the legislation stems from countries, like France and Britain, where some legislators have put forth proposals to ban content pirates from the Internet after three occurrences of copyright infringement. Some consumer organizations were opposed to these laws, and the resulting debate has spawned this compromise.

It's just the latest in government documents that were supposed to be secret, but became public after being leaked onto an unsecured peer-to-peer network. The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee has issued a statement regarding a document that detailed secret ethics investigations against 30 members of Congress that became public after it was exposed via a committee staffer's use of peer-to-peer software. The committee's investigations take place under strict secrecy - with members and staffers taking oaths not to reveal information about the committee's investigations, so the leaking of the document represents a major breach in the committee's protocol. The leaked document contained summaries of investigations of 30 lawmakers, and was given to The Washington Post by an Internet user that had downloaded it from the staffer's computer via P2P.

This isn't the first time that sensitive U.S. government data has been inadvertently leaked on a P2P network. Earlier this year, schematics for a new Marine One, the president's helicopter, were found on a P2P network via P2P software running on a government contractor's computer. The issue has also become the subject of a piece of legislation in the House called the Informed P2P User Act, which aims to prevent these types of leaks from occurring. Given this breach, it appears that it's time to add rules for government employees' use of P2P software.

Thinking about hacking your cable modem to squeeze a few more megs out of your broadband connection? Based on the experience of one Oregon hacker and writer, you might want to think twice before modding your modem. Ryan Harris, the 26 year-old author of a book entitled Hacking the Cable Modem, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston on charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting computer intrusion and wire fraud. The six-count indictment charges Harris with providing other hackers with the instructions and hardware to steal broadband service from their Internet service providers.

According to this article, in addition to writing the book on modding Motorola Surfboard modems, Harris is the project organizer of a group of hackers named TCNiSO, that specializes in selling users pre-hacked modems. Harris himself is alleged to have sold an FBI agent two hacked modems through TCNiSO's web site.

The hacked modems allow users to either steal broadband service by spoofing another legitimate user's cable modem MAC address or provide the user of the hacked modem access to uncapped broadband speeds. At least one of the users that TCNiSO and Harris are alleged to have aided in stealing broadband service has plead guilty to computer intrusion using a modded modem.

The moral of the story when it comes to experimenting with your cable modem - it's a lot easier and cheaper to simply upgrade and pay for your broadband speed legitimately. Using network management systems, cable operators can easily track and trace spoofed MAC addresses and modems that are eating more than their fair share of bandwidth. According to Broadband Reports, Harris faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release, a $250,000 fine and restitution on each of the six counts.

Was that really worth avoiding paying $30, $40 or even $50 per month?

The cable industry's trade association, NCTA and NBC Universal have filed a joint brief with the U.S. Federal Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit in the dispute between Comcast and the FCC regarding the cable operator's network management practices with respect to peer-to-peer protocols. As many readers recall, the FCC sanctioned Comcast just over a year ago for violations of the Commission's network non-discrimination guidelines. Comcast has contested the sanctions on the basis that the FCC's guidelines had not been formally adopted as rules.

The NCTA and NBCU filing indicates that the FCC's recent decision to plunge into a formal rule-making process for network non-discrimination would tend to support Comcast's contention that the Commission had not already adopted the guidelines as rules under which it sanctioned Comcast and that the Commission has admitted that Internet service providers need some leeway in managing their network to provide an enjoyable broadband experience for all users.

"[T]he FCC has now acknowledged that there is a legitimate need for network management by ISPs," the brief said. "Just a few weeks ago, in moving to establish the principles of the Policy Statement as enforceable rules, the FCC stated that it "recognize[s] the importance of preserving and protecting broadband providers' flexibility to manage their networks in a way that benefits consumers and will further the safety, security, and accessibility of the Internet' and that it is seeking to 'provide greater clarity regarding the Commission's approach ...[and] to provide greater predictability.' The FCC has now effectively conceded that the principles of the Policy Statement are not 'clear' as to 'who must comply and in what way' and disavowed the standard for reasonableness employed in the Order as 'unnecessarily restrictive.' "

It's hard to prove the negative but we know that without proper network management practices, the Internet would become a big pile of useless wires and electronics.  This new FCC should be methodical in its review of this very complex and critical issue.

The federal court will hear arguments in the case on January 8th of next year.

A few years ago with digital video recorders coming into vogue, many broadcast television executives expressed a nervousness about how the future of ad-supported broadcast TV would be affected if viewers could simply record and fast-forward past the commercial breaks. But, as it turns out, they probably didn't have much to be concerned about. The New York Times reports that Nielsen data shows that DVR viewers are increasingly not fast-forwarding past the commercials (with the exception of my wife). And, the kicker is that DVR playback rates are increasing the ratings of some shows more than 20 percent over the live viewership.

Nielsen switched the way it measured television viewing a couple of years ago by tracking not only live views of commercials, but those watched in the next three days via DVR. Today, over one-third of American households have at least one DVR. Those in the network television business openly voiced concerns about the new measurements having a negative impact on show ratings - the yardstick for the cost of advertising on the shows - because viewers had the ability to skip the commercials with DVR technology.

But, it appears that many viewers are accustomed to simply watching television shows without going to the hassle of hitting the fast-forward button every time a commercial comes on. Nielsen reports that 46 percent of DVR television viewers 18 to 49 watch the recorded commercials, and it's that viewership that is helping shows that might otherwise have poor to middling ratings with live viewership report respectable if not great ratings via their recorded viewership.

Based on the report last week from Light Reading that AT&T's U-verse product growth is stalling, Suddenlink FYI points to the report of an analyst that believes that U-Verse will continue to loose steam because the product's engineering cannot make the jump to the next level of broadband speeds that customers want.

Samuel Greenholtz, a retired Verizon employee and founder of a consulting firm named Telecom Pragmatics, writes:

We expect dramatic cutbacks in U-verse CAPEX [capital expenditures] over the next two years. The service has pretty much been a bust. For AT&T, 3Q09 will probably “be identified as the quarter in which the U-verse star started to fade.”

AT&T’s U-verse will not be “getting in stride” or “picking up steam.” There are indications that point to significant pullback on CAPEX for the service in 2010 and 2011. The reason why these are not “hyper growth” times for U-verse is that the main technology used was doomed from the start.

U-verse technology uses the same twisted pair copper that Ma Bell has utilized for phone service for decades. At some point, its ability to transmit broadband speeds comparable to cable just can't keep up. And the analysis that U-verse technology is a "bust" are words coming from a former phone company employee. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Smart mobile phones have sensors to detect when a user is making or receiving a call, dimming the screen to save battery life during the call. Now, television manufacturers may begin integrating a similar feature into high-energy television screens to reduce their electricity usage.

I've written here about television manufacturers that are experimenting with remote control systems that recognize hand gestures. Using similar sensing technology, TV makers at the Japanese technology expo CEATEC have exhibited a futuristic television screen that can tell when a viewer has turned their head away from the screen. That motion is detected by the television via facial recognition cameras, which dims the television screen. The television automatically reduces its energy usage based on the fact that the viewer is no longer actively watching. When the cameras "see" the viewer turn back toward the screen, the brightness is automatically turned back up.

Size is the largest factor in a television's energy usage, and this technology could significantly reduce the energy usage of large screen televisions. It's a neat idea, if viewers can get over the idea that while they're watching their television, it is watching them back.

 
At this moment, the nation's two largest cable operators - Comcast and Time Warner Cable - are testing web video streaming sites with cable programming content for their customers. Comcast expects to turn on its web video portal, called Comcast OnDemand Online, by the end of this year for all Comcast customers with their cable and broadband products. Yesterday at the Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, the cable industry's research and development consortium, CableLabs, announced a request for information to define a common technical framework for cable operators to provide online access to cable programming content.

Completing such a common framework world give all cable operators the ability to implement their own versions of online programming access with authentication for current customers. This CableLabs RFI is the first step in a process that promises to develop standards for the entire cable industry to roll out this innovative product to our customers.

Vendors have until December 11th to respond to the CableLabs RFI. Key components of the RFI include service architecture, technical interface specifications, resource attributes specifications, infrastructure components and security for customers' private information. From the responses, CableLabs will begin putting the pieces together toward the release of a standard for online cable programming.

J.D. Power and Associates has released their annual ratings of customer satisfaction among Internet service providers, ranking all major ISPs on performance and reliability, cost of service, customer service, billing and offerings and promotions. J.D. Power ranks customer satisfaction for ISPs based on which of four region(s) where each provides broadband service.

In the South Region of J.D. Power's ratings, I'm thrilled that Insight's broadband service is rated second of the 14 providers surveyed, with a higher customer satisfaction than any of Insight's competitors in the markets we serve. Bright House Networks, another cable broadband provider was the highest rated in the South Region.

Overall, the average score for broadband providers in the J.D. Power study was 639, while Insight scored a 668 in the South Region. Customer satisfaction with providers appears to be going up across the board, with an average 43 point increase in the performance and reliability category from the 2008 study and 66 percent of users indicating to J.D. Power that they would recommend their Internet provider to others, increasing four points from 2008.

According to GigaOM, there may be a fight brewing over the future of a significant portion of the current broadcast television spectrum between broadcasters and wireless phone carriers, pitting the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as the referee. The wireless industry's trade association CTIA filed a report with the FCC last week requesting that the Commission release 800 MHz of spectrum to satisfy future needs for mobile data - which are expected to grow by a factor of 66 between 2008 and 2013, based on an estimate from Cisco. Driving this spectrum need are the growing number of mobile phones that feature full web browsers and the ability to record and upload video.

As it turns out, there isn't 800 MHz of spectrum sitting on the shelf that the FCC can simply auction to the highest bidders among the wireless carriers. Spectrum is a finite resource, and in this case it's occupied by broadcast television channels.

While this is a similar issue to the current white-space debate, it's different from the standpoint that satisfying the demands of the wireless industry will necessitate a wholesale reallocation of spectrum. With proposed white-space devices, spectrum hopping is employed - the devices look for unoccupied spots in the space between channels in the broadcast spectrum. While it has yet to be perfected in practice, in theory white space mobile broadband might coexist with television broadcasts in the same spectrum range.

As GigaOM suggests, I agree that this debate will reach the halls of Congress before it is resolved. Broadcasters don't want to give up spectrum, but growing wireless data demand isn't likely to be resolved using existing spectrum.

Hulu has capitalized on providing ad-supported online video of television shows and movies to its users, but Paramount Digital Entertainment is betting that web re-runs isn't the only way to make online video profitable. The studio has created a professionally produced show, named "Circle of Eight," exclusively for web viewers. The show kicked off yesterday on social networking site MySpace.

President of Paramount Digital, Thomas Lesinski had this to say about the studio's plan for the show:

"I think the people who tell you that it can't be done have a different strategy than us. Our goal is to create professional content that is supported by digital distribution...I can't give you the budget (for Circle of Eight) but I can tell you that it was not inexpensive. (Others have tried this) but they weren't high-production value, scripted shows. We think it will be interesting to prove the platform can support high-quality."

Circle of Eight features clues for viewers to "unlock the mystery" that is the running plot of the show.  It leverages its position on a social networking site, encouraging viewers to share their favorite episodes with their MySpace friends. Paramount has worked out product placement deals with several advertisers, including Mountain Dew, Adobe and Blockbuster.

The first three episodes of the web series are available at the series web site, and two more are set to be posted on November 3rd.

Many cable operators are in the process of upgrading broadband systems and customers' modems to the DOCSIS 3.0 standard, offering speeds between 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps downstream. But even as the cable industry is rolling out these blazing fast broadband speeds, there are those in the industry's R&D field that are working on the next step up in broadband speeds. At the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing Summit (CTAM) in Denver yesterday, Jeff Baumgartner reports on vendor plans for DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem configurations that could provide broadband speeds downstream in excess of one gigabit per second.

It works like this - the basic DOCSIS 3.0 standard requires that a cable modem be able to bond 4 channels. At those specs, a cable modem can provide speeds greater than 100 Mbps in both directions. At CTAM, Baumgartner ran into a vendor that is working on bonding 8 and 16 channels downstream. According to Baumgartner, 16 bonded channels would provide for 640 Mbps downstream. And in extreme case, the vendor indicated he had seen a request that would 32 bonded downstream channels that would allow 1.2 Gbps of data to flow downstream. Speeds that fast might mean its time for a new ethernet card capable of bringing those speeds into a computer.

Here at Insight, we're planning for DOCSIS 3.0 speeds, but this article reminds me that we're still not close to maxing out the potential of today's cable technology to deliver the super-fast broadband speeds of the future.

Now all we have to figure out is what to do with all that speed.

The fact that all web addresses today are in characters that speakers of English are familiar with is something that many of us take for granted. But in countries with predominant languages that don't use Latin characters - like Chinese and Arabic - keying in a web site's URL involves the use of a foreign language. That may change if a proposal that currently sits before the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is approved. ICANN is the international organization that sets the rules for Internet domain names.

Called Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), the proposal would allow domain names to be constructed with non-Latin characters - like Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Korean. IDNs would have the ability to be translated into Latin characters in a process that is invisible to the user, allowing Internet infrastructure to properly route the user's web request. Proponents of IDNs have been testing these translations, and have confidence that if ICANN approves the proposal, IDNs can be deployed as early as next year.

IDNs have the potential of growing Internet usage in many countries where non-Latin languages are predominant by making the web syntax familiar to users.

In fact, the timing of these questions couldn’t be better since this issue has been one that we’ve been working on since FSN South launched their high definition service six weeks ago.

I want readers of my blog to be among the first to know that Insight will now be providing our customers in Louisville, Lexington and Northern Kentucky, the high-definition broadcasts of UK football and basketball games scheduled to air on Fox Sports South, including this weekend’s game with Mississippi State. The games will air on Insight Digital HD channel 929 (channel 930 in Bowling Green) and I’ve provided a full schedule of games, as they are currently scheduled, below.

Providing the UK games as a special event is a temporary measure until we are able to launch Fox Sports South HD in the not-too-distant future. We entered into talks with Fox Sports to carry their new high definition service as soon as we learned about the launch of their new HD feed. Although we were able to finalize an agreement very quickly for Bowling Green, certain technical issues had to be worked out in our other districts. But because we understand how important the Cats are to our customers, we reached out to Fox Sports to make special arrangements to carry the UK games while we resolved the technical issues in those districts. It took both technical and deal-making creativity by big Cats fans who work at Insight and I’m thrilled to tell you that we were successful.

As you may know, we already delivered the past two UK football games on FSN South – against South Carolina and Louisiana-Monroe – in HD on channel 929 in Lexington where we were able to reach an earlier special arrangement in UK’s home market. Just this week we successfully reached a full agreement with Fox to provide future games in Louisville and Northern Kentucky, too. And, as I said, we’re currently working diligently to make Fox Sports South HD a permanent fixture on our channel lineup in Louisville, Lexington and Northern Kentucky, so you won’t miss any of their SEC games after we launch it.

We know better than any of our national competitors what’s important to our customers because so many of us live and work in the communities we serve. There should be no question that Insight is your best choice for home-team sports. Here’s a list of the UK football and basketball games scheduled to air in HD on Fox Sports South as of now:

Football

10/31/09 - vs. Mississippi State – Lexington, Ky. - 7:00 p.m. ET

Basketball

10/28/09 - Blue/White Game (FS South/BBSN) - Lexington, Ky. - 7:00 p.m. ET

11/02/09 - vs. Campbellsville (FS South) - Lexington, Ky. - 7:00 p.m. ET

11/06/09 - vs. Clarion (FS South) - Lexington, Ky. - 7:00 p.m. ET

11/16/09 - vs. Miami University (FS South/BBSN) - Lexington, Ky. - 7:00 p.m. ET

11/19/09 - vs. Sam Houston State (FS South) - Lexington, Ky. - 7:00 p.m. ET

11/21/09 - vs. Rider (FS South) - Lexington, Ky. - 1:00 p.m. ET

11/30/09 - vs. UNC Asheville (FS South) - Louisville, Ky. 7:00 p.m. ET

12/23/09 - vs. Long Beach State (FS South) - Lexington, Ky. 1:00 p.m. ET

Netflix and Sony have a planned announcement today that will bring the Netflix streaming video library to the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console. The companies plan to bring the functionality to the PS3 next month, with each Netflix subscriber receiving a special Blu-ray disc that will activate the feature on the console. While the activation disc will be free, PS3 users will need a broadband connection and a Netflix subscription.

This feature is the same as Netflix streaming feature already available to users of Microsoft's XBox 360 with XBox Live Gold service and users of the Roku streaming box. The Netflix library features around 10,000 feature length titles for streaming, which is substantially smaller than its library of DVD titles that the company ships to subscribers through the mail.

Last week, I passed along data from two Internet traffic studies from Cisco and Arbor Networks that indicated the growth of streaming video as a percentage of total network traffic. Network management systems vendor Sandvine has released another traffic study that tends to confirm the same findings that Cisco and Arbor Networks reported. Sandvine's 2009 Internet traffic trends report found a substantial bandwidth growth shift toward streaming video sites like YouTube and Hulu - accounting for 27 percent of all Internet traffic.

That's up from 13 percent in Sandvine's study from last year, more than doubling streaming video's portion of the bandwidth pie in a year in which all segments increased. Peer-to-peer traffic's percentage appears to be taking the brunt of the growth of streaming video, which fell from 32 percent of all traffic to just 20 percent this year.

And while Cisco reported the average broadband user downloaded 11.4 GB per month, Sandvine reports a smaller 8 GB per month average download. Sandvine's analysis of Internet prime time roughly correlates with Cisco's findings, with Sandvine calling the 7pm-10pm time period downloading "prime time," while Cisco tagged the 9pm-1am time period "prime time" for the Internet.

Overall, it appears the most important trend reported by all three traffic studies is the ongoing shift from illegal content trading on P2P networks to legal content viewing on streaming video web sites.

The head of AT&T's wireless division stated publicly yesterday that the company is working on plans to impose a surcharge on high-bandwidth users of its wireless network. AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega in remarks on AT&T's third quarter earnings conference call said that the company was assessing the impact of the FCC rule-making process with respect to network neutrality on AT&T's plans to charge high bandwidth users more than other users.

Without disclosing an exact percentage for the planned charges, de la Vega indicated that a small percentage of network users were consuming a majority of bandwidth, and the overage charge plan would be directed at curbing those "bandwidth hogs," as de la Vega referred to them. Earlier this year, de la Vega revealed that 3 percent of AT&T's wireless users consumed 40 percent of network capacity.

It remains to be seen whether the FCC will adopt Chairman Julius Genachowski's proposed network neutrality rules and whether new non-nondiscrimination rules will apply to wireless networks.

The free ride for popular long-form online streaming site Hulu may be coming to an end next year. Yesterday, News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey told a meeting of broadcasters that, "It's time to start getting paid for broadcast content online." News Corp. is a content partner in Hulu, along with NBC Universal and Disney.

Carey went on to tell broadcasters that Hulu would probably develop a subscription plan for users as early as next year.

The strategy needs to be more than just fighting piracy and Google, he says. "I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content. I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value," Carey said. "Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business."

Currently, Hulu's video content is ad-supported and free to users. Cable operators, including Comcast and Time Warner, are working on their own long-form streaming sites for their customers that would allow access to cable content from a broadband connected computer. Comcast has indicated that their streaming site will be available to Comcast video and broadband customers by the end of this year.

If you're a Microsoft Windows user, today's the big day for the next version of the world's most popular operating system. Today is the release date for Windows 7.

Many users expressed disappointment with the last Windows release - Windows Vista. After many users and businesses decided to stick with Windows XP rather than upgrading to Vista, Microsoft retooled the development process for Windows 7, opening the process up to users to provide input on the product's features and functionality. This article from CNET also outlines Microsoft's decision to work more closely with computer manufacturers in the development of Windows 7, yielding what many reviewers and testers believe is a much better product than the much-maligned Vista.

As with the release of Vista, Windows 7 comes in several different version ranging from a slimmed-down version for netbooks to an "Ultimate" version with all the OS's bells and whistles. CNET has published a full review of the product with plenty of videos and screenshots for those questioning whether they're ready to make the jump to Windows 7 or whether their computer can handle the new OS.

I wrote yesterday about the overall decline of P2P traffic as a percentage of all Internet traffic, according to a Cisco study. While the reasons for the decline in P2P traffic are unclear, there's at least one dissenting voice that believes P2P traffic continues to increase, just not at the same pace as other traffic, like streaming media.

Janko Roettgers blogging at NewTeeVee cites another Internet traffic study by Arbor Networks that found P2P traffic had decreased from 40 percent of all Internet traffic in 2007 to 18 percent of traffic today. But, Roettgers questions - as I did in my post yesterday - whether the Cisco and Arbor Networks studies are showing an actual decrease in P2P traffic or merely that P2P traffic isn't growing as fast as the explosion of streaming media traffic.

Roettgers questioned Arbor Networks Chief Scientist Craig Labovitz about the numbers, with Labovitz confirming the possibility that P2P traffic was still increasing marginally, just not holding its own against the growing popularity of streaming video. With Internet traffic growing 35 to 45 percent each year, and more users gravitating to sites like Hulu, where they can easily stream their favorite TV shows and movies, the laborious process of downloading the same shows and movies on a P2P connection just isn't as appealing. And the millions of Internet users that are voting with their web browser, choosing streaming over P2P, are starting to show up in these traffic studies.

If you're downloading more than 11.4 gigabytes each month on your broadband connection, you're consuming more than the average broadband user, according to a recent study released by Cisco. Aggregating anonymous customer data from a range of ISPs worldwide, Cisco tracked and compiled several interesting statistics that are fairly revealing when it comes to broadband usage.

P2P usage is actually down as a percentage of all broadband traffic from 50 percent in an earlier study, to 38 percent today. The reduced P2P usage may be a function of the increased stigma among broadband users of using the protocol to download illegally copied materials, a result of the recent Swedish court battle against top P2P tracking site The Pirate Bay or simply a larger proportional increase in other network traffic.

There are large disparities in the amount broadband users download. The top 10 percent of broadband downloaders account for 60 percent of all broadband usage, and the top 1 percent consume 20 percent of network resources. On average, an individual broadband user downloads around 11.4 GB each month. That's somewhere in the neighborhood of the size of  5-7 digitized feature length movies or well over 3,000 music files.

Cisco's study also revealed that there is an Internet "prime time." Twenty five percent of all Internet traffic occurs in the four-hour period between 9pm and 1am in the prevailing local time zone. During peak Internet usage, traffic exceeds non-peak usage times by 20 percent.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how digital music sales now account for 35 percent of all music sales in this country. Apple's iTunes Music Store accounts for the majority of all digital music sales and 25 percent of total music sales. Those numbers have apparently caught the attention of search giant Google, as TechCruch and other tech blogs are reporting today that Google may be poised to jump into the digital music market.

In 2008, Google launched a music service in China, only available to Internet users in that country. TechCrunch reports that Google's new music service will be different for U.S. users, as the Chinese service allows users to download music for free. It's reportedly going to be named Google Audio.

No word yet on whether the service will allow users to download or stream music content. As the numbers reflect, Apple currently dominates online music sales. As it has with other introductions, Google will likely look to leverage its position in search to direct music queries toward it's new offering.