File-sharing junkies, the scourge of media companies everywhere, have become a headache for Internet service providers too.
The proliferation of high-speed Internet access has created an explosion in file trading, an activity that hogs bandwidth and racks up big network costs for access providers.
Major music labels and Hollywood blame the emergence of file-sharing networks such as Grokster and Kazaa for opening up a black market for copyrighted materials that’s eating into their business.
Now ISPs say that as much as 60 percent of data traffic zipping around their networks is in the form of large music, movies and software files. For a large ISP, experts say, the bandwidth costs needed to accommodate the traffic could run into the millions, if not tens of millions of dollars per year.
British start-up CacheLogic estimates the global cost of file sharing to ISPs will top $1.3 billion in 2003, an expense that will nearly triple next year.
“What the ISPs are spending on bandwidth is one of their greatest capital expenditures,” said Andrew Parker, a co-founder of CacheLogic.
The escalating bandwidth costs associated with file sharing are not sending ISPs into the red, but the companies are anxious to bring the amounts under control.
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