Comcast Hit With FCC Complaint Over Net Neutrality Violations (streamingmedia.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Non-profit public interest group Public Knowledge has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission regarding Comcast's Stream TV service. The complaint says that Comcast excludes Stream TV traffic from its own data cap, which is both a violation of its merger agreement and counter to the FCC's Open Internet rules. Stream TV is a $15 per month offering for Xfinity internet customers. It includes local channels, some basic cable, HBO, and the use of a cloud DVR. Most content is streamed over the home network. Public Knowledge's senior staff attorney, John Bergmayer says, "Comcast's actions could result in fewer online video choices for viewers nationwide, while increasing its dominance as a video gatekeeper. If its behavior persists, prices will go up, the number of choices will go down, creators will have a harder time reaching an audience, and viewers will have a harder time accessing diverse and independent programming."

Comments

Comcast Arrogance

[hinesbrad]

When we moved from many, many ISPs to just a few Cable Providers in the 1990's we mistakenly made only a few large telco and cable companies responsible for the internet. This is by definition monopoly power. It disgusts me that we trust an organization with this level of evil with ensuring free and fair communication. Why do we put up with this?

Re:Comcast Arrogance

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm. Even before, few companies owned the lines. The "others" you are thinking of leased the lines at cost. Most of the lines for dial-up (not really covered in this, as it was local calls instead of a dedicated data line) and dsl were owned by one of the baby Bells. Those were all bought up, and eventually things changed so that companies weren't able to get access to those lines easily enough.

That is only for phone line services. For cable, they have never leased out their lines to a third party afaik.

Speaking of which, are any of the Bells around any more? I think they all got bought up or name changed by this point.

Re:Comcast Arrogance

[Z00L00K]

I think that as long as carriers aren't separated from content providers we will continue to see this problem.

The only content a carrier shall provide is a customer support interface to allow them to file trouble tickets and manage their service.

Re:I don't find data caps to break NN

[silas_moeckel]

Sure till its effectivly a walled garden. This es exactly what net neutrality has to protect us from. Then its the refusal to get enough bandwidth to any but preferred sites.

Re:I don't find data caps to break NN

[QuietLagoon]

... it seams reasonable to me to put caps on out of network usage, but no caps on usage from servers which are wholly owned by the ISP....

That's unfair advantage. Especially when companies like Netflix are paying Comcast to get on Comcast's network.

Re:Guide to Propaganda: How to Use Grammatical Voi

[QuietLagoon]

...Note active voice "Comcast's response is that Stream TV doesn't go over the internet, but is delivered over the same closed path as its cable streams...

That's a diversion. It's the same coax going into the house, it's the same overall bandwidth on that coax. Comcast is playing with words.

Re:I don't find data caps to break NN

[Chibi Merrow]

As long as competitor content isn't slowed down to make your content more attractive, it seams reasonable to me to put caps on out of network usage, but no caps on usage from servers which are wholly owned by the ISP.

That would almost make sense if they similarly exempted traffic from any server co-located in their data centers, like the free CDN solution Netflix offers ISPs to reduce congestion on their external links. Except they don't do that, they charge Netflix AND count it against the cap.

I don't think you understand net neutrality, or how ridiculous Comcast is.

Re:I don't find data caps to break NN

[beelsebob]

Of course there isn't - they're slowing the speed of the other services to 100GB per month, while not similarly slowing the speed of their own service.

The fact that "speed" is not measured across a second, but a month in this instance is irrelevant, it's still quantity of data per fixed amount of time.

Re:I don't find data caps to break NN

[dgatwood]

No, it should include sites wholly owned by the ISP, too. There's no reason Comcast's video-on-demand service should get preferential treatment over Netflix. There's no reason Comcast's own VoIP service should get preferential treatment over Skype. The main point of Net Neutrality was precisely to prevent first-party services by monopoly ISPs from engaging in unfair competition against third-party services. ISPs favoring one third-party service in exchange for monetary compensation has always been of secondary concern.