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.

Lies, lies, lies.

[Jaysyn]

Tagged: LiesAndLiars

Seriously, if they were *just* throttling the connection, there wouldn't be a problem. They were basically "disconnecting" the file transfer. This is analogous to a telephone operator listening to your phone conversation & cutting you off if she doesn't like what you're talking about.

If I wanted AT&T's opinion...

[jesdynf]

I'd solicit it through illegal means and shield them with retroactive immunity.

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.

Its like this son...

[GlobalColding]

The "tubes" aren't limitless. If we dont cap their use, we will run out of Internets.

Re:Yep

[Belial6]

The same could be said about all those jerks that want graphics sent across their internet connections. Really what needs to be done is to get us back to only sending green screen updates. All that wasteful html traffic has just caused needless upgrades. If you need to consume more than a what a 1200 baud modem can offer, perhaps what you need is a dedicated line. Not a consumer internet connection.

Look, it was no secret as to what Comcast was jumping into when they decided to get into the internet business. In fact it seems pretty obvious that they were quite clear on the fact that bandwidth would keep increasing to the point that people would just get their video directly from the source, instead of paying them to be a gatekeeper middleman. What they were hoping for was that they could use their monopoly power to stifle the internet so that their monopoly would not crumble in face of actual competition. So far they have been successful. Now that people are starting to cry foul, they are trying to pretend that they are the victims.

It always amazes me how many people will defend someone who is clearly trying to screw them.

Re:Watershed Moment

[Smidge204]

watch the US economy stagnate, and fall behind the rest of the developed world

This has already happened =( Hey! No spoilers... I'm still waiting for the download to finish!
=Smidge=