FCC orders Comcast to stop arbitrarily blocking Internet traffic

by Stephen Withers

Tuesday, 05 August 2008

Page 1 of 4 ! In a move that will be welcomed by net neutrality advocates, the US Federal Communications Commission has slammed Comcast for selectively blocking its customers' peer-to-peer traffic. The FCC has also ordered Comcast to take a number of measures to rectify the situation. In November 2007, Free Press, Public Knowledge and other organisations including the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School filed a petition for declaratory ruling, asking "the FCC to clarify that an Internet service provider violates the FCC's Internet Policy Statement when it intentionally degrades a targeted Internet application" such as BitTorrent. The FCC decision to uphold the petition was reached by a 3:2 majority after receiving evidence from engineers and other experts, plus 6500 comments from interested parties. If the FCC is to believed, Comcast's behaviour in the matter has been questionable to say the least. The FCC statement asserts that the company initially claimed it had no responsibility for the peer-to-peer problems its customers were reporting, then that it only interfered with such traffic during times of network congestion, and finally that it interfered with peer-to-peer traffic regardless of the time of day or the degree of network congestion. Comcast has been ordered to provide details of its discriminatory network management practices, a plan to stop such practices by the end of the year, and disclose to its customers and the FCC the practices that will be adopted in their place. Why do I believe some commentators are misrepresenting the ruling? Find out on page 2. << First page <   1 2 3 4 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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