TAG | FCC orders Comcast to stop arbitrarily blocking Internet traffic |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Tuesday, 05 August 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 4 Furthermore, Comcast's behaviour in failing to correctly advise customers of its interference with certain traffic was anticompetitive as customers were likely to blame their applications rather than Comcast for the problems they experienced, thus disadvantaging those programs in the market.Yet Commissioner Robert McDowell, one of the two dissenting voices, claims "the practical effect of today's order requires all network operators – cable, telcos and wireless providers – to treat all Internet traffic equally." Both McDowell and Deborah Tate (the other commissioner voting against the decision) express concern about the majority of Internet users. "[R]ather than concentrating on 10% of the traffic by 5% of the heaviest bandwidth users, we should be ensuring that the 95% of ordinary subscribers are not negatively impacted as they use their internet for their child's homework, shopping, getting news, sending emails and watching TV and YouTube," was the way Tate expressed it. While that's an obvious rallying cry for getting Mr and Ms America aboard McDowell and Tate's non-interventionist position, the fact remains that if Comcast or any other ISP was allowed to arbitrarily interfere with their customers' peer-to-peer traffic, it could just as easily decide to block access to TV sites such as those operated by the US networks, or to YouTube. When does "reasonable" network management need to come into play? Please read on to the final page. |
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