Competitors Ally With Comcast In FCC P2P Filings

crocoduck writes "Right before the deadline passed for filing comments in the FCC investigation of Comcast's traffic-management practices, telecoms and other cable companies submitted a slew of comments defending Comcast's actions to the FCC. 'Just about every big phone company has filed a statement challenging the FCC's authority to deal with this problem. AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest all submitted lengthy remarks on February 13th, the last day for comments on the proceeding (parties can still reply to comments through the 28th). "The Internet marketplace remains fundamentally healthy, and the purported 'cure' could only make it sick," AT&T's filing declared. "At best, the network-management restrictions proposed by Free Press and others would inflict wasteful costs on broadband providers in the form of expensive and needless capacity upgrades — costs that would ultimately be passed through to end users, raise broadband prices across the board, and force ordinary broadband consumers to subsidize the bandwidth-hogging activities of a few."' P2P fans have also weighed in."

Comments

Needless?

[MachineShedFred]

"expensive and needless capacity upgrades" which the US Taxpayers ALREADY PAID FOR THROUGH EXCISE FEES?!

The telcos can eat a bag of dicks.

Western countries' telecoms seem crotchety

[CRCulver]

In my experience in Eastern Europe, customers that heavily use bandwidth are the average customer. I know hardly a single household that doesn't massively download music and films. Nonetheless, the local ISPs can keep monthly fees down to what is even by local standards cheap, and people are increasingly getting fiber to their door. Funny how the U.S., that beacon of technological progress, is being outdone by some former Communist states.

Translation

[Wildclaw]

Translations:

marketplace remains fundamentally healthy, the non market driven place where the minimal competition allows us to dicate all the terms, remains a good place for us to squeeze money.

and the purported 'cure' could only make it sick, the suggested changes would make it more difficult for us to squeeze money out of our customers.

"At best, the network-management restrictions proposed by Free Press and others would inflict wasteful costs on broadband providers in the form of expensive and needless capacity upgrades The suggested changes would force us to spend money on upgrades, that we could avoid spending by capping everyone so much that they become unneeded.

ordinary broadband consumers customers who hardly use the broadband they paid for.

the bandwidth-hogging activities of a few. the activities that we advertise our services for, but that we don't want our customers to use.