FCC votes to punish Comcast

[Daikun]

MaineCoasts brings news that three out of the five FCC commissioners have voted in favor of punishing Comcast (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/internet_regulation) for their P2P throttling practices. The investigation of Comcast (http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/08/01/08/220246.shtml?tid=95) has been underway since January, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin made clear their conclusion (http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/11/1234249.shtml?tid=95) a couple weeks ago. Ars Technica has coverage (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080725-hammer-drops-at-last-fcc-opposes-comcast-p2p-throttling.html) as well, noting:"The initial report on the vote said nothing about which way Republican commissioners McDowell and Tate might lean. FCC watchers wouldn't be at all surprised to see both vote against the order; the really interesting moment could come if they support it. Having four or even five commissioners support the order would send a strong bipartisan signal to ISPs that they need to take great care with any sort of discriminatory throttling based on anything more specific than a user's total bandwidth."

Taken from Slashdot. (http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/27/1257237.shtml)

[Draft]

Take that Comcast! You and your constant upcharging on my Cable and Internet!!!! I used to pay $4 for HD Box, but when I got DVR Box, I had to pay $14 for HD Box, and I think $20 for DVR..

Joking Comcast Worker who moderates my Internet since I got caught using Torrents a few months back

[Temple Fugate]

I think I'll do a happy dance now. I've been wanting them to burn for this for months.

The other good news is that I get to move home in a month and be free of Comcast's evil grip for the forseable future.

[SirLemming]

So wait... The FCC did something good?

[Matt Hazuda]

So wait... The FCC did something good?They approved the XM/Sirius merger, so that's two things in one month. We'll never hear anything good from them again for the rest of their (the 5 FCC commissioners) terms now :sweat:

[Kevin]

It's about time! Now if only the FCC would do something about their monopoly, bad customer service, and constant raising of rates.

[Lavenderpaw]

Yeah,Comcast always gave me these bizarro channels when I was up at my moms.Can't wait for 09 when my cable may or may not be obsolete.I thought it was only satelite but I'm not sure.

[Blackstar]

Now the FCC needs to crack down on Comcast for their perpetually raising rates. Comcast's rates becoming relegated is the only way that I would ever consider going back to them. Until then, I'll stick with my satellite.

[peterg14]

I hope this means lower digital cable rates.

Almost $500 dollars for cable? They're insane.

[Wounded_Dragon]

Lower? Ha! Comcast will likely whine about it to their subscribers, urging them to write their congress-people to undo the decision, and at the same time use it as an excuse to charge more for the same service.

[Temple Fugate]

Lower? Ha! Comcast will likely whine about it to their subscribers, urging them to write their congress-people to undo the decision, and at the same time use it as an excuse to charge more for the same service.Probably. I can just see the letter in my mailbox now...

---------------------

Dear Comcast Customer,

As you may or may not be aware, the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) is fining us an exorbitant amount of money for interfering with your internet bandwidth. We here at Comcast are dedicated to providing you with the best possible service, but with the crushing blow this has dealt to our finances, we will be forced to increase your generously low $45.95/month internet charge to a more "standard" $65.95/month.

We thank you for your continued support of Comcast. Please know that this is still an amazing deal, as we could easily choose to charge you $100/month and you'd still pay it because we have a stranglehold on your area.

We would hope to keep our prices reasonable, but apparently the FCC would have it differently. We urge you to write to your congressmen to reverse the FCC's findings. With enough support, we can overturn the decision, and then it will be the FCC who will owe US a fine. With that fine, we can pay our greedy shareholders, make even better commercials, and send our CEO on the vacation he's always wanted.

Perhaps we might even invest a little bit of it in our services to give you better quality cable signal so that the TV Guide Channel stops being fuzzy and mute, and that Cartoon Network no longer comes in hopelessly dark.

But I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Sincerely,

Comcast

P.S. All our customers' 10GB bandwidth has now been permanently reduced to 1GB. Thanks for ratting us out to the Feds.

[Chykin]

Probably. I can just see the letter in my mailbox now...

---------------------

Dear Comcast Customer,

As you may or may not be aware, the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) is fining us an exorbitant amount of money for interfering with your internet bandwidth. We here at Comcast are dedicated to providing you with the best possible service, but with the crushing blow this has dealt to our finances, we will be forced to increase your generously low $45.95/month internet charge to a more "standard" $65.95/month.

We thank you for your continued support of Comcast. Please know that this is still an amazing deal, as we could easily choose to charge you $100/month and you'd still pay it because we have a stranglehold on your area.

We would hope to keep our prices reasonable, but apparently the FCC would have it differently. We urge you to write to your congressmen to reverse the FCC's findings. With enough support, we can overturn the decision, and then it will be the FCC who will owe US a fine. With that fine, we can pay our greedy shareholders, make even better commercials, and send our CEO on the vacation he's always wanted.

Perhaps we might even invest a little bit of it in our services to give you better quality cable signal so that the TV Guide Channel stops being fuzzy and mute, and that Cartoon Network no longer comes in hopelessly dark.

But I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Sincerely,

Comcast

P.S. All our customers' 10GB bandwidth has now been permanently reduced to 1GB. Thanks for ratting us out to the Feds.

Lol, so true. :D

[The Irishman]

And just to confuse things, via Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080801/1236201863.shtml):
First, under a baseless legal threat from Andrew Cuomo that it was not blocking certain objectionable content, Comcast caved and agreed to start blocking that content. Then, just a few days later, the FCC (as was widely expected) concludes that Comcast violated its "open internet" guidelines by blocking certain content. So, apparently, the mixed message lessons of the day for Comcast: it's okay to block content when the government says so (with no legal basis), but it's not okay when you block stuff yourself (or so says the government, perhaps with no legal basis).

They're kinda between a rock and a hard place really.

[Temple Fugate]

Well that's odd. I thought they were finally getting nailed on P2P bandwidth throttling.

I'm wary about linking to the site directly, as it comes from TorrentFreak, but here's an excerpt from a blog post from their site last year. You can Google search for the full text.

Over the past weeks more and more Comcast users started to notice that their BitTorrent transfers were cut off. Most users report a significant decrease in download speeds, and even worse, they are unable to seed their downloads. A nightmare for people who want to keep up a positive ratio at private trackers and for the speed of BitTorrent transfers in general.

ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for almost two years now. Most ISPs simply limit the available bandwidth for BitTorrent traffic, but Comcast takes it one step further, and prevents their customers from seeding.

Although, this news article (http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/27/technology/comcast.fortune/index.htm) from earlier this year seems to report they have already settled the problem.

I'd also heard a while ago that, what Comcast might have been doing, was actually shunting down your bandwidth if they detected a P2P client operating on your connection. Whatever they were doing, whether it was simply impairing my seeding ability or reducing the speed at which I transferred any content while torrenting, is a total violation of ethical standards, and probably a violation of their duty to give me the bandwidth that I was promised when I paid my bill.

I pay good money for my internet. Whenever I'd turn on Bittorrent, everything would slow down. Firefox. FTP. My roommates' internet connections on the same wireless router. I confirmed that this wasn't caused by Bittorrent hogging all our bandwidth. I wouldn't be seeding OR leeching. I could just have Bittorrent open and connected to the net, with NO torrents on the list, and bandwidth would be denied me. Reasearching on the net led me to the conspiracy theory in the above paragraph.

Was Comcast purposely denying me my maximum allowed bandwidth because they wanted to save that bandwidth for their other customers? Why would they do that? Did they not HAVE enough bandwidth available if all their customers used all of their allowed bandwidth at once? Did Comcast promise their customers more bandwidth than they were capable of providing? Was this their way of making up for it, while choking our money out of us as if we were getting all we were promised? I can't confirm it, but I strongly suspect it.

My trouble HAS decreased noticeably over the past few months, actually beginning no later than a month after that article says they solved the dispute, so I guess the FCC may be acting on this new thing, and not this other, older problem that's been going on for a lot longer. :shrug:

[The Irishman]

It's a case of promising more than you can deliver. If you tell someone they have unlimited access to the internet, it is entirely unreasonable to expect them to not exploit it to the fullest. The problem is that the hardwire telecommunication networks that were existing at the time broadband came about are simply unable to deal with the volume of traffic. Many phone companies and ISPs in general never saw the revolution that was online video and P2P coming, both of which require huge amounts of bandwith. Essentially, Comcast is trying to limit those customers it feels are gobbling up bandwith 'unfairly' because it won't admit that the only other solutions are to a) upgrade their network, which is expensive and b) set caps on bandwith usage, which would ultimately send people to other ISPs with no caps. Therefore its easiest for them to single out the heaviest users (and label them 'pirates' and 'copyright infringers' for the lawyer's benefit) and mess with their bandwith instead.