Comcast tells FCC that blocking customers' file transfers is a fully legitimate exercise of...

[techs]

http://www.theinquirer.net/art...st-tries-stonewall-fcc

Comcast tries to stonewall the FCC
13 Feb 2008 | 17:55 GMT

By Egan Orion

Comment Within our rights, guv

THE GIANT US cable TV and Internet Service Provider (ISP), Comcast told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Tuesday that blocking customers' file transfers is a fully legitimate exercise of its network management rights.

Late last year, the Associated Press and others caught Comcast surreptitiously injecting reject packets into customers' file transfer sessions over the Internet.

As we reported at the time, consumer rights groups then filed formal complaints against Comcast with the FCC. Comcast's statement to the FCC yesterday was made in the context of the FCC's regulatory investigation of those complaints.

Comcast customers have alleged that its interruption of Peer-To-Peer (P2P) file transfers violates the principle of Network Neutrality, which requires all types of Internet traffic to be treated equally by service providers.

Customers have also charged that Comcast interferes with users' downloads of movie files because those might compete with the company's premium cable TV channels and on-demand movie purchases.

In its formal comments, Comcast claimed that it hampers some file transfers in order to manage its network. It said that it only curbs some file-sharing sessions to prevent a few subscribers from clogging up network traffic in neighbourhoods.

Comcast's claims are disingenuous, in that they serve to obscure that fact that Comcast oversells its cable bandwidth. Because the cable loop in any particular neighborhood is shared by all of its subscribers and has limited total bandwidth, Comcast sells more customers high advertised bandwidths than it can deliver.

This is a widely recognised limitation of cable Internet access, but Comcast and other cable ISPs won't readily admit it and, understandably, don't advertise it.

Furthermore, cable bandwidth is asymmetrically provisioned, such that more bandwidth is allocated to downlinks than to uplinks. If subscribers upload fil es on a particular neighborhood cable loop, they can exhaust the available uplink bandwidth. Comcast alluded to this problem in its formal comments to the FCC.

Having oversold its bandwidth infrastructure and thus promised its subscribers more than it can deliver, Comcast took the only tack it could take, that is, claim that its interference with its customers' Internet traffic is necessary and justified in order to manage its network.


Freakin' Comcast.

 

[StageLeft]

I understand their standpoint and legally it sounds fine. I guess we could get another subscriber if we cared enough.

 

[RightIsWrong]

I wonder if their entire customer base can get a nice class action suit for deceptive business practices, false advertisement or some other sort of breach of contract?

 

[ElFenix]

i'm glad i dumped comcast.

my parents are way at the far end of one of comcast/time warner's lines (houston area is a company that is a partnership between comcast and TW, and changed names from TW to comcast recently). so my parents got really crappy service. snowy tv, flaky cable modem, etc. the whole neighborhood is like that. cable company told them they'd have to purchase an amplifier to install in order to get good service. what a load of crap. comcast provides flaky service and it's my parents' fault.

some people in the neighborhood have VOIP phone service through comcast and it's often unusable in the afternoon.


damn government granted monopoly.

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
I wonder if their entire customer base can get a nice class action suit for deceptive business practices, false advertisement or some other sort of breach of contract?

it's probably not a breach of contract. comcast probably only agreed to provide service as comcast sees fit. deceptive business practices might be a possibility.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
I wonder if their entire customer base can get a nice class action suit for deceptive business practices, false advertisement or some other sort of breach of contract?

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing.

Selling a promised amount of bandwithd, then not actually having the capacity to provide it, and then purposefully killing off your legitimate file transfers. WTF?

Fern

 

[nismotigerwvu]

Well this will totally solve their issue in what I like to call the "Nextel Model" in that their issues with operating over capacity will be quickly solved by them driving all their paying customers to the competition and thus eliminating (among other things) most of the load on the network. So stupid it is brilliant.

 

[RightIsWrong]

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu
Well this will totally solve their issue in what I like to call the "Nextel Model" in that their issues with operating over capacity will be quickly solved by them driving all their paying customers to the competition and thus eliminating (among other things) most of the load on the network. So stupid it is brilliant.

the only problem with that is that their only competition in a lot of areas is satellite because of legal monopolies in defined districts.

Boy am I glad that I have fiber to the house and was able to ditch TW.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu
Well this will totally solve their issue in what I like to call the "Nextel Model" in that their issues with operating over capacity will be quickly solved by them driving all their paying customers to the competition and thus eliminating (among other things) most of the load on the network. So stupid it is brilliant.

the only problem with that is that their only competition in a lot of areas is satellite because of legal monopolies in defined districts.

Boy am I glad that I have fiber to the house and was able to ditch TW.

This is me seething with envy

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu
Well this will totally solve their issue in what I like to call the "Nextel Model" in that their issues with operating over capacity will be quickly solved by them driving all their paying customers to the competition and thus eliminating (among other things) most of the load on the network. So stupid it is brilliant.

the only problem with that is that their only competition in a lot of areas is satellite because of legal monopolies in defined districts.

Boy am I glad that I have fiber to the house and was able to ditch TW.

Yup, Texas is home of the state supported cable monopolies. Damn liberals. It's Ann Richard's fault.

 

[Corn]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
I wonder if their entire customer base can get a nice class action suit for deceptive business practices, false advertisement or some other sort of breach of contract?

Maybe all Comcast has to do to fight off all that kind of suit would be to present their logs of the files downloaded from P2P applications from each of the individual users suing them. If it can be shown that those files were illegal downloads of protected IP content, well, perhaps you just might find a whole lotta plaintiffs dropping outta the class action. That would be pure comedy.

 

[BoberFett]

I'm going to exercise my fully legitimate rights to network management and cut the Comcast cable that runs through my front yard.

 

[blackangst1]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I understand their standpoint and legally it sounds fine. I guess we could get another subscriber if we cared enough.

Or find a way around it

 

[Wreckem]

Originally posted by: Fern

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
I wonder if their entire customer base can get a nice class action suit for deceptive business practices, false advertisement or some other sort of breach of contract?

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing.

Selling a promised amount of bandwithd, then not actually having the capacity to provide it, and then purposefully killing off your legitimate file transfers. WTF?

Fern

They promise unlimited bandwidth, within there terms of services. As with everything you gotta read the fine print.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: Wreckem

Originally posted by: Fern

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
I wonder if their entire customer base can get a nice class action suit for deceptive business practices, false advertisement or some other sort of breach of contract?

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing.

Selling a promised amount of bandwithd, then not actually having the capacity to provide it, and then purposefully killing off your legitimate file transfers. WTF?

Fern

They promise unlimited bandwidth, within there terms of services. As with everything you gotta read the fine print.

Do you not find something wrong, if not contradictory, with selling a product - moving the customer's files through the net - then turn around and kill off the customer's file transfer?

That's giving me the WTF? reaction here.

They're sabotaging their customers. Killing the very service they're selling to them.

Fern

 

[charrison]

Considering something like that 5% of the users generate over 50% of the net traffic, can you really blame them for shaping traffic so the other 95% get a good experience as a customer.


And giess what, if cable companies increased capacity without traffic shapping, those same 5% would still manage to generate more than 50% of the traffic.

 

[Vic]

I can't blame them for arguing that, even though I disagree in principal.

I've had Comcast for a few years now and been happy with the service. Maybe that's because I had to deal with the hell that was ATTBI and @Home before that, but Comcast has been pretty good to me (although you pay for it).
Admittedly though, I would go to Verizon FIOS in a heartbeat if I lived a mile or 2 further west where it's available, but Qwest doesn't offer that where I am and they're the worst phone company on the planet.

 

[Moonbeam]

I dumped Comcast for att dsl and am much happier with the slower service because it has gone out only a hand full of times a year instead on a couple of times a day.

 

[dawp]

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu
Well this will totally solve their issue in what I like to call the "Nextel Model" in that their issues with operating over capacity will be quickly solved by them driving all their paying customers to the competition and thus eliminating (among other things) most of the load on the network. So stupid it is brilliant.

the only problem with that is that their only competition in a lot of areas is satellite because of legal monopolies in defined districts.

Boy am I glad that I have fiber to the house and was able to ditch TW.

Yup, Texas is home of the state supported cable monopolies. Damn liberals. It's Ann Richard's fault.

I think Richards was a better governor then the bozo we have in the WH now. But it don't matter to me now since I no longer live in the cesspool known as TEXAS :laugh:

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: charrison
Considering something like that 5% of the users generate over 50% of the net traffic, can you really blame them for shaping traffic so the other 95% get a good experience as a customer.

And giess what, if cable companies increased capacity without traffic shapping, those same 5% would still manage to generate more than 50% of the traffic.

Yes, I can blame them for that. If they didn't want 5% to use 50% of the bandwidth, then they should have put a rate or total bandwidth cap in the contract. If 5% of people use 50% of the electricity, what happens? They get charged 50% of the costs. It's not exactly like business models to address this sort of thing aren't available in every other industry. The cable companies are just promising the moon when they know they can't (or won't) deliver, yet here you are sticking up for them.

 

[ScottMac]

Originally posted by: Fern

Originally posted by: Wreckem

Originally posted by: Fern

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
I wonder if their entire customer base can get a nice class action suit for deceptive business practices, false advertisement or some other sort of breach of contract?

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing.

Selling a promised amount of bandwithd, then not actually having the capacity to provide it, and then purposefully killing off your legitimate file transfers. WTF?

Fern

They promise unlimited bandwidth, within there terms of services. As with everything you gotta read the fine print.

Do you not find something wrong, if not contradictory, with selling a product - moving the customer's files through the net - then turn around and kill off the customer's file transfer?

That's giving me the WTF? reaction here.

They're sabotaging their customers. Killing the very service they're selling to them.

Fern

I think it really boils down to the Terms of Service.

Comcast Terms of Use


For example, this is item xiv:

run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;

and there are others that might apply as well.

While searching for the above link, I also found this one:

Comcast tweaks Terms of Service in wake of throttling uproar

IMHO, it really comes down to the user signed a contract, that's what they get. Most ISPs restrict their "general public" consumers (versus business-class service) from using the ISP's bandwidth to "serve"

As for one of the bottom paragraphs in the OP:

"
Furthermore, cable bandwidth is asymmetrically provisioned, such that more bandwidth is allocated to downlinks than to uplinks. If subscribers upload files on a particular neighborhood cable loop, they can exhaust the available uplink bandwidth. Comcast alluded to this problem in its formal comments to the FCC.
"

The asymmetrical nature of the link is a limitation of the technology and infrastructure.

I don't think the Class will prevail. Contracts is contracts, and the rule that has them beat is in the top paragraph of the Terms of Use:

(Partial quote of the document. Complete quote of this paragraph, which is highlighted in block at the top of the page)

Important Note: Comcast may revise this Acceptable Use Policy (the "Policy") from time to time without notice by posting a new version of this document on the Comcast Web site at http://www.comcast.net (or any successor URL(s)). All revised copies of the Policy are effective immediately upon posting. Accordingly, customers and users of the Comcast High-Speed Internet Service should regularly visit our web site and review this Policy to ensure that their activities conform to the most recent version. In the event of a conflict between any subscriber or customer agreement and this Policy, the terms of this Policy will govern. Questions regarding this Policy and complaints of violations of it by Comcast customers and users can be directed to http://www.comcast.net/help/contact/.
(end quote, emphasis added by me)

They can make whatever changes they deem necessary and if you don't like it, you can usually leave without any additional charges.

There are always alternatives, though many are either slower (dialup) latency-prone (satellite) or more expensive (business class or alternatives like a T1).

It's their network. Bandwidth is not a right, it's a product. If you don't like the product, then don't buy it. If it changes and the change is not to your satisfaction, then use something different.

For as much as I hate to defend the likes of Comcast, I think their contract & Terms of Use will succeed in court.

 

[ScottMac]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: charrison
Considering something like that 5% of the users generate over 50% of the net traffic, can you really blame them for shaping traffic so the other 95% get a good experience as a customer.

And giess what, if cable companies increased capacity without traffic shapping, those same 5% would still manage to generate more than 50% of the traffic.

Yes, I can blame them for that. If they didn't want 5% to use 50% of the bandwidth, then they should have put a rate or total bandwidth cap in the contract. If 5% of people use 50% of the electricity, what happens? They get charged 50% of the costs. It's not exactly like business models to address this sort of thing aren't available in every other industry. The cable companies are just promising the moon when they know they can't (or won't) deliver, yet here you are sticking up for them.

Be careful what you wish for. This kind of billing is easily implemented on an ISP model.
What would you do if all ISPs went to this?

They are not capping the bandwidth, they are slowing it down, and only specific traffic types. If that's unacceptable to the user, they can move to something else.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: Fern
Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing.

Selling a promised amount of bandwithd, then not actually having the capacity to provide it, and then purposefully killing off your legitimate file transfers. WTF?

The problem, Fern, is there will never be a case.

Comcast, like the other cable monopolies, sells a service "Up To" a certain speed. And in the fine print, the speed is not guaranteed, even a minimum service level. Those two little words allow them to weasel and duck around any potential liability for poor service.

 

[smack Down]

Originally posted by: ScottMac

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: charrison
Considering something like that 5% of the users generate over 50% of the net traffic, can you really blame them for shaping traffic so the other 95% get a good experience as a customer.

And giess what, if cable companies increased capacity without traffic shapping, those same 5% would still manage to generate more than 50% of the traffic.

Yes, I can blame them for that. If they didn't want 5% to use 50% of the bandwidth, then they should have put a rate or total bandwidth cap in the contract. If 5% of people use 50% of the electricity, what happens? They get charged 50% of the costs. It's not exactly like business models to address this sort of thing aren't available in every other industry. The cable companies are just promising the moon when they know they can't (or won't) deliver, yet here you are sticking up for them.

Be careful what you wish for. This kind of billing is easily implemented on an ISP model.
What would you do if all ISPs went to this?

They are not capping the bandwidth, they are slowing it down, and only specific traffic types. If that's unacceptable to the user, they can move to something else.

Pay less for the internet.

 

[Lemon law]

I don't know if that will succeed in court if we look at comcast as a public regulated utility with a basic monopoly in many places. No regulations of the free enterprise system always fails in practice. The FCC under GWB has historically
been far weaker than it should be. I think the concept of a FCC asleep at the switch will change when the democrats are in the white house. Which explains a push to set harder to overturn precedents now. Hopefully court action can delay that tactic until after the election when wiser heads will be running the FCC.

 

[her209]

Originally posted by: smack Down

Originally posted by: ScottMac

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: charrison
Considering something like that 5% of the users generate over 50% of the net traffic, can you really blame them for shaping traffic so the other 95% get a good experience as a customer.

And giess what, if cable companies increased capacity without traffic shapping, those same 5% would still manage to generate more than 50% of the traffic.

Yes, I can blame them for that. If they didn't want 5% to use 50% of the bandwidth, then they should have put a rate or total bandwidth cap in the contract. If 5% of people use 50% of the electricity, what happens? They get charged 50% of the costs. It's not exactly like business models to address this sort of thing aren't available in every other industry. The cable companies are just promising the moon when they know they can't (or won't) deliver, yet here you are sticking up for them.

Be careful what you wish for. This kind of billing is easily implemented on an ISP model.
What would you do if all ISPs went to this?

They are not capping the bandwidth, they are slowing it down, and only specific traffic types. If that's unacceptable to the user, they can move to something else.

Pay less for the internet.

Keep dreaming. They'll keep charging the same rates to the lower use customers and charge more money to the higher use customers.