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Written by Daniel
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 14:14 |
Comcast Put on the Stand in FCC Broadband Hearing
Tom Corelis (Blog) - February 26, 2008 9:29 AM
DailyTech
Comcast found itself on the stand yesterday, facing harsh scrutiny and pointed questioning from FCC commissioners during a summit held at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The topic: how ISPs are allowed to control their infrastructure under the FCC’s edict of “reasonable” network management, a term which, currently, is only vaguely defined. Public outcry prompted the FCC to revisit the topic when the AP discovered last October that Comcast actively meddled with P2P traffic by impersonating users’ computers – an unusual practice that many consider above the law – in an effort to conserve customers’ bandwidth usage.
Both during the summit and in prior statements, Comcast defended its tactics as necessary to protect the collective quality of its customers’ Internet experience.
At one point, FCC Commission Chairman Kevin Martin asked Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen why his company felt it necessary to block customers’ P2P traffic when customers were acting within the contractual constraints sold to them.
“Doesn’t that undermine the argument you’re making?” asked Martin. [DailyTech...] [Comments...] |
