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Comcast Has 30 Days To 'Fess Up About P2P Throttling

negRo_slim writes with some welcome news from Ars Technica: "Comcast has 30 days to disclose the details of its 'unreasonable network management practices' to the Federal Communications Commission, the agency warned Wednesday morning as it released its full, 67-page Order. As FCC Chair Kevin Martin said it would, the Commission's Order rejects the ISP giant's insistence that its handling of peer-to-peer applications was necessary. 'We conclude that the company's discriminatory and arbitrary practice unduly squelches the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet,' the agency declares." And from reader JagsLive comes news that Comcast has a different plan in place to deal with heavy bandwidth users: slow traffic for up to 20 minutes at a time to users who are grabbing the most bits.

5 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Or else what? by Drakin020 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is the FCC going to do...Send another strongly worded letter?

    Seriously, I want to see something actually happen for once.

    --
    The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
  2. Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? by eln · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This type of throttling seems like it could be a real problem for Video On Demand applications, since suddenly slowing down your connection when you're streaming video could result in some pretty lousy viewing experiences.

    Since Comcast itself seems like one of the companies poised to go into Video On Demand in a big way, this strategy seems like shooting themselves in the foot. Sure, they could have it throttle only if it's not Comcast's VOD, but then they run into the same issue with the FCC that they currently have with the P2P throttling.

    I don't see how Comcast can do real content-agnostic throttling without screwing with its own content offerings. I guess that's the problem with being a bandwidth provider and a content provider at the same time.

  3. Take starbucks by b1gb1rd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    for instance. The minute Starbucks stock stopped earning gobs of money, the greedy investors got cold feet and ditched their shares. What we need to do to battle Comcast is not to go through the FCC, but to scare the investors. We know we can't convince subscribers to give up the service, so we should hit them in the ball sack.

  4. Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Interesting

    pay based on how much bandwidth you use- say 25 cents a gig + 10$/month for the connection its self- that way it regulates its self. you use more, you pay more and it doesn't matter what kind of data it is. the isps get more $ for more traffic they get and consumers don't get throttled nor do those who don't use much pay truckloads for the privilage of just getting online. [in fact data use would somewhat be encourageable by isps because they'd make more] it works for utilities like water, gas, electric etc why not here too?

    --
    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
  5. Time Warner by SoopahMan · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Why oh why is Time Warner not in trouble for this same thing yet? Their BitTorrent throttling is much worse. Basically any torrent upload traffic whatsoever causes ALL internet traffic - even something as simple as Instant Messaging - to come to a halt. It cycles repeatedly about once per minute for as long as upload traffic is attempted.

    How can I put Time Warner in their place? What data do I need to collect? Are there law firms I should contact with the data who would be likely to pursue a class action lawsuit? Paying to be abused like this is outrageous.