Monumental FCC Ruling on Comcast P2P Practices

We will be seeing some (hopefully positive) changes in the way Comcast manages their network; specifically Peer to Peer traffic to and from their customers.

On August 1st, the FCC released a press statement skewering Comcast’s practice of throttling or dropping altogether traffic bound for or coming from their customers that is classified as “Peer to Peer.” The statement starts off by detailing how Comcast first lied about shaping this type of traffic altogether:

When first confronted with press reports about these difficulties, Comcast disclaimed any responsibility for its customers’ problems. However, after tests conducted by the Associated Press and Electronic Frontier foundation suggested that Comcast was selectively interfering with attempts by customers to share files online using peer-to-peer applications, Comcast changed its story and admitted that it did target its subscribers’ peer-to-peer traffic for interference. The company initially claimed that it did so only during periods of peak network congestion and of heavy network traffic. Later, confronted with yet more evidence suggesting that interference was not limited in this manner, Comcast recast its position yet again and admitted that it interferes with peer-to-peer traffic regardless of the level of overall network congestion at the time and regardless of the time of day.

The article goes on to use language that historians may recall someday:

The Commission concluded that Comcast’s network management practices discriminate among applications rather than treating all equally and are inconsistent with the concept of an open and accessible Internet.  

 

It also looks at why Comcast may REALLY be trying to stop or least interfere with P2P traffic on their network:

Indeed, the Commission noted that Comcast has an anticompetitive motive to interfere with customers’ use of peer-to-peer applications. Such applications, including those relying on BitTorrent, provide Internet users with the opportunity to view highquality video that they might otherwise watch (and pay for) on cable television. Such video distribution poses a potential competitive threat to Comcast’s video-on-demand (“VOD”)service.

…

Because Comcast did not provide its customers with notice of the fact that it interfered with customers’ use of peer-to-peer applications, customers had no way of knowing when Comcast was interfering with their connections. As a result, the Commission found that many consumers experiencing difficulty using only certain applications would not place blame on Comcast, where it belonged, but rather on the applications themselves, thus further disadvantaging those applications in the competitive marketplace.

And finally, the prescription:

Under the plan, within 30 days of release of the Order Comcast must:

• Disclose the details of its discriminatory network management practices to the Commission.
• Submit a compliance plan describing how it intends to stop these discriminatory management practices by the end of the year.
• Disclose to customers and the Commission the network management practices that will replace current practices

I can already feel the bandwidth. Let’s hope the FCC keeps up this precedent-setting style.