When it comes to the question of net-throttling, Comcast and its PR wonks have pulled every trick in the prevaricators handbook to avoid owning up to the fact that they blanket-monitor their subscribers' content and byte-censor downloads that they deem “inappropriate”, e.g. BitTorrent peer-to-peer or file-sharing movies. It simply galls them that content utilising their net resources does not also net them revenues.
Keep in mind that Comcast is the largest cable MSO in the US and one of the largest national ISPs and the issue is seen as a national problem driving the 'open access to the Internet' debate, a fact that has not been lost on the Federal Communications Commission. Indeed Chairman Kevin Martin last week issued a statement via the Associated Press that his agency would officially sanction the cableco in what is described as a “precedent-setting move” by a government commission jumping into an affray normally settled by a few raps of the civil court gavel.
FCC Head Kevin Martin told the AP last Thursday that the commission has set up a set of regs that expressly “protects consumers’ access to the Internet" from the kind of practises that Comcast has been undertaking; firstly “arbitrarily" blocking Internet access and then failing to disclose to consumer that they were doing so – except of course for the dozens of subs and privacy rights groups that have dragged Comcast into court where the practice first came to light.
"We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles,” said Chairman Martin. These principles set forth back in September 2005 say, paraphrased, that US broadband networks are “open, affordable and accessible” by everyone.
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