Comcast and Secret Policies

The FCC has finally commented on how they would deal with Comcast in the aftermath of their applications interference scandal. Federal Communications Commission chair, Kevin Martin on Friday told an audience at Stanford University that he had been troubled by Comcast's behavior. He had also stated that the agency is "ready, willing, and able" to deal with the problem. In my opinion the FCC should have acted weeks ago. They should immediately draw up new rules to govern the running of broadband. What is need is a clear set of rules to govern broadband internet services.

This controversy started back in January, with an Associated Press story that revealed that Comcast was interfering with Bit Torrent traffic by sending TCP "reset" packets to end users. In the very face of an amounting body of evidence, Comcast still denied allegations that it specifically targeted Bit Torrent and other applications. Vice president of Comcast, David Cohen even went as far as stating that the company's traffic control measures conform fully to the FCC's definition of "reasonable network management". Only after months of stonewalling did they admit to the truth, that they were not only using traffic shaping practices on P2P traffic but to Lotus Notes email services. This wasn’t the first time that Comcast was not up front. Last year it was reported that they had an Invisible Bandwidth Limit. They stated that it would shut down customers who went above what the company considered average use. The problem was they never gave a hard number for average use, making it difficult to know whether a user was in danger of being shutdown.

Comcast says that it needs to limit bandwidth-consumption of users to keep the quality of services. Their cable networks work by connecting homes up to local nodes, with every home on a particular node drawing from the same pool of bandwidth. The typical node servicing up to 450 homes as few as 15 high bandwidth users maxing out their connections, all 450 homes could see their network access impeded enough to be noticeable.

The problem with the Comcast traffic shaping is that nowhere in their license agreements or in any of their ads do they state that they’re using these measures. Comcast and all ISP have the right to limit user bandwidth but customers have the right to know that their service providers are doing it. That is why the FCC needs to make a bill of rights for consumers’ when it comes to the internet. The FCC should force all ISP to disclose full all bandwidth-caps and the use of packet shaping. I personally left Comcast for ATT mainly because of these unannounced policies. I just hope that ATT starts to use the “Comcastic” model of the internet.