Comcast Announces Collaboration with Vonage on Internet traffic

Press release reveals that Comcast Corp. will work together with Vonage Holdings Corp., the leading independent Internet phone service, to ensure a fair treat for its customers with regard to Internet calling.

Comcast is currently under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission for what critics say is an unfair way to manage its subscribers' Internet traffic.

Comcast got us used to its claim that this practice is required to prevent having a small number of high-traffic subscribers making a neighborhood network much slower. However, it pledged to implement a new traffic management system that will not discriminate between various types of traffic by the end of the year.

Another move from the company was to appeal to file-sharing companies in an attempt to create mutually acceptable techniques. This new agreement with Vonage is by the same token.

As Internet telephone traffic is particularly affected by delays, it can easily become exposed to congestion as well as traffic management.

Probably worth mentioning is that both companies are competitors in the phone business, Comcast currently having 5.2 million phone subscribers, while Vonage only about half that number.