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:Comcast Arrogance

[jader3rd]

Why do we put up with this?

Because big players can make deals with local politicians and say something like "Give us a monopoly, and we'll give internet to a low cost housing unit (or something like that)" and the politician will agree. Because the next time they run they can say "Look at what I did! I enabled a program which provided internet to a low cost housing development." which is way easier than saying "I resisted breaking the principles of an open marketplace." The latter being rather fuzzy, especially in the minds of voters.

Re:Comcast Arrogance

[dgatwood]

Realistically, there's only one way to get competition in broadband, and that's with municipal fiber, owned by the community, maintained through fees charged to the ISPs that lease it to service homes and businesses. The profit motive gets removed from the picture when it comes to the actual line costs and maintenance, which means maintenance is likely to actually get done instead of getting deferred until things break, and the barrier to entry drops massively because companies don't have to maintain their own lines, which means more competitors providing service.

Re: Comcast Arrogance

[kenh]

Need to convince people that what they have 256 Kbps or 1.5 Mbps isn't good enough.

Says who? You? Who are you to tell others what they want or need?

Re:Comcast Arrogance

[RabidReindeer]

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?

It was no mistake. It was Lower Prices Everyday [TM].

My ISP changed names about 4 times as it got bought by bigger and bigger companies. Because the bigger companies had more efficiencies of scale. They could buy goods and services in bigger volumes, thus achieving more profitability than their smaller rivals. They could afford to buy smaller rivals outright. And it's a positive feedback loop. The bigger you are, the bigger you can get - nothing succeeds like success.

A lot of people who worship The Free Market as a god have this mental image that a totally free market can exist where all buyers and sellers have equal power.

For the most part, you only get that with gross commodities and small startup costs. Dry cleaning establishments, independent eateries and so forth.

A Capital Market is different. If you need to raise capital just to get started, you're already seeing market freedom drop out. Relatively few people are willing (or often even able) to risk substantial amounts of money to build a plant, tool it up, obtain raw materials, invest in warehousing and shipping infrastructure (even outsourced, there are expenses), and hire the various people to keep it all running. What retail customers end up with is typically an asymmetric take-it-or-leave-it set of choices from an extremely limited set of suppliers. But Please Stay on the Line, Your Call is very important to us!

Granted, an ISP isn't exactly your classical Dark Satanic Mill. My original ISP was a guy who'd installed some surplus racks in a spare bedroom and operated over dialup POTS. His successors probably spend about half as much for 10 times as much capacity because they have Economies of Scale. He probably wouldn't even be able to get a foot in the door these days.

And that's not even counting the infamous Last Mile where the fewer the number of players digging up the neighborhood the better.

Re:Comcast Arrogance

[Solandri]

Erm, the municipalities are the ones who gave the cable and phone companies monopolies in the first place. Why are you trying to solve a government-created problem with more government control? Europe and Asia have better Internet than the U.S. not because of more government control, but because they were smart enough to regulate their Internet in a way which creates more competition.

The only way to get competition is to prohibit the company who owns the pipe from selling what's sent through the pipes. This is already done for natural gas and electricity in in most areas. One company owns and maintains your gas lines, but you can choose from hundreds if not thousands of gas providers. The company who owns the pipes usually also sells gas, but only through a subsidiary (in my area, that's the difference between The Gas Company and Sempra Energy), and they're required to allow other gas providers to send gas through their pipes for the same transport fee they charge their subsidiary.

Of course if you choose to buy gas from company ABC, the methane atoms that come into your house don't all come from company ABC. They all get mixed together in the pipeline. But as long as you use x cubic feet of gas, and company ABC inserts x cubit feet of gas into the system on your behalf, the numbers all balance out.

We tried a similar thing with DSL for a while - forcing local phone companies to lease their lines to other DSL providers for the same price as their own DSL service. It worked on the pricing side. What sank it was (at least in my area) Verizon gave priority to fixing physical line problems when the line used their DSL service. Getting them to fix a line problem when using a 3rd party DSL service was like pulling teeth - they'd keep blaming the DSL company for the problem. In the face of that kind of malfeasance, the only solution is to entirely prohibit the company who owns the pipe from selling what's sent through the pipes.

Guide to Propaganda: How to Use Grammatical Voice

[MSTCrow5429]

'Comcast's actions could result in fewer online video choices for viewers nationwide, while increasing its dominance as a video gatekeeper," Bergmayer says. "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.' - 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, and so is exempt from the rules. It calls Stream TV a cable service, not an OTT service." - Note passive voice

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:I don't find data caps to break NN

[duke_cheetah2003]

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.

Bzzzzt. Wrong. Sorry. That's not the correct answer. This is almost exactly the same thing as that offer from Sprint to allow streaming videos from certain providers not to count against data usage. This is precisely what net neutrality is meant to guard against.. preferential treatment of any data. They need to uncap it all, or it all counts against cap.

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

[Rick Zeman]

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.

Bzzzzt. Wrong. Sorry. That's not the correct answer. This is almost exactly the same thing as that offer from Sprint to allow streaming videos from certain providers not to count against data usage. This is precisely what net neutrality is meant to guard against.. preferential treatment of any data. They need to uncap it all, or it all counts against cap.

Pretty sure you should have said T-Mobile, not Sprint.

Re:Guide to Propaganda: How to Use Grammatical Voi

[duke_cheetah2003]

"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, and so is exempt from the rules. It calls Stream TV a cable service, not an OTT service." - Note passive voice

Ugh, so flagrant violation of NN it's sickening. And defending it by saying 'omigosh, its OUR OWN intranet!' It's a good defense, and precisely why content providers need to be separated from internet providers, or be forced to play by NN rules. This is exactly what NN exists to prevent. Almost feels like Comcast looked at pro-NN discussion and decided to pick the most blatant violation they could find and do it.

Does rather feel like a gauntlet being thrown down at the FCC, "We're violating NN rules. Whacha gunna do now?" :P Let's just hope the consequences are enough to discourage the behavior, rather than be an 'acceptable price of doing it.'

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

[fnj]

I've heard it used to refer to a kind of internet Fairness Doctrine that would have forced web browsers to randomly redirect you from one news site to another (e.g. from Fox to CNN) so you didn't hear too much information from any one biased source.

You've been listening to the 1 percentile brain dead idiot right wing. Nobody who has paid any attention whatsoever thinks it means anything of the kind.

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

[penguinoid]

Yeah, I'd have no problem with data caps either, if data caps were headgear with memory space. As opposed to limits that result in slower connection, no connection, or additional fees.

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

[beelsebob]

If there are caps on their servers, but not on yours, then their servers are by definition slowed down. They can transfer a limited amount of data in a fixed set of time, yours can transfer an unlimited amount in the same time. Thus, theirs are slowed.

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

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I'm pretty sure there's a difference between not offering anymore service, vs. slowing service down.

No, there isn't. Preference of one service over another is the opposite of neutral.

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.

Why Comcast will say it's ok, and why it's not

[Solandri]

Quick tip for those trying to argue against this. You can't simply argue "Net neutrality good!" There's a real lowered economic cost with the way Comcast delivers these services - they locally host the servers which contain the streaming data, so the data doesn't have to get to them over the Internet. Consequently it doesn't cost them any bandwidth so they can provide it to you at lower cost. And since the data never has to travel over the Internet to get to them, net neutrality doesn't really apply.

The way you have to argue against this is that they're mingling the accounting between two different operations. Unless they can prove the service costs them exactly $15/mo per user or less (minus their normal profit margin), they're essentially taking money from other cable subscribers to subsidize this service. That should be pretty easy to prove given that HBO Now just by itself is $15/mo. Thus they're pricing it below their own cost, which given the local monopoly they hold is illegal. Add in the fact that they initially refused to accept the local servers Netflix offered to them for free precisely to eliminate the bandwidth charges, and you have a slam dunk of an anti-trust case.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the company which owns the pipes is also selling stuff transported through those pipes. That gives them an unfair advantage over competing companies trying to sell stuff transported through their pipes. The solution is to prohibit the company who owns the pipes from selling anything which is sent through it. Break the company up into two separate entities - a pipe maintenance company and a pipe content company.