Tuesday, 29 July 2008

FCC Will Conclude the Comcast Case This Week

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is a step closer to punishing cable TV giant Comcast for blocking some subscribers' Internet traffic. The commission is expected to issue a ruling, this week, that the cable giant violated federal law when it prevented some customers from swapping videos on file-swapping service BitTorrent.

The punishment apparently consists of an order which demands that the ISP stops slowing down or blocking certain types of traffic, including peer-to-peer transfers. Also, the FCC will make Comcast explain to consumers and the commission how it has blocked such traffic in the past, and publicly disclose how it plans to manage its network in the future.

Three out of the five commissioners have already voted in favor of the punishment, which is obviously a majority. However, the remaining two commissioners still need to vote for the decision to be final.

Comcast, the largest cable provider in the U.S, has been under fire for months after it was discovered the company had been slowing down peer-to-peer traffic on its network. The company claimed it had singled out peer-to-peer, file-sharing traffic, because it was eating up an inordinate amount of bandwidth, which caused degradation across the rest of its customers.