Purchasing Additional Bandwidth

For many ISPs who see their bandwidth demands increasing from P2P traffic, the solution is simple — purchase more bandwidth to keep pace with subscriber demand. Bandwidth is inexpensive, and subscribers have come to expect unlimited, on-demand, high-speed access. Purchasing additional bandwidth to handle P2P network growth does not require complex technology solutions or any changes to underlying business policies.

However, this approach has some clear downsides. Internet transit bandwidth pricing is stabilizing and is clearly not going down significantly beyond its current level. Adding bandwidth also comes with upgrade of expensive routing/switching/transmission networks, which cannot be overlooked. After years of unbridled subscriber and revenue growth, limited growth in the overall business means ISPs can no longer consider bandwidth to be free but a significant cost to factor into overall per-subscriber costs. Nevertheless ISPs' business is to monetize the bits to increase average revenue per user (ARPU) rather than subsidizing it for flatter or decreasing ARPU.

Additionally, P2P applications are designed to consume as much bandwidth as is available. Adding more bandwidth will almost instantly lead to more consumption. Without managing the P2P traffic, buying additional bandwidth will have little long-term effect other than increasing bandwidth costs for the ISP.

Purchasing Additional Bandwidth
Pros	Cons
No negative customer impact	Increasing bandwidth costs difficult to control
No technology investment required	P2P traffic eats up added bandwidth