FCC vs. Comcast – Final Round

As we kept you posted about the progress of the FCC's vote and decision against Comcast, we thought you should know the latest buzz on the matter. After releasing on Aug. 1 an order with a press release titled "Commission Orders Comcast to End Discriminatory Network Management Practices", the FCC made a lot of people curious about the consequences of this decision and what will the final outcomes be. Here is what the FCC's Web site revealed related to Comcast – “Comcast Corp’s management of its broadband Internet networks contravenes federal policies that protect the vibrant and open nature of the Internet.”

Though we can’t say surprisingly, the results proved that Comcast “had deployed equipment throughout its network to monitor the content of its customers’ Internet connections and selectively block specific types of connections known as peer-to-peer (P2P) connections.”

What this press release (and the FCC implicitly) achieved will be probably best seen after some time from now. It was about time that the problems related to P2P use of BitTorrent, (which rises the question of blocking any P2P applications) were addressed this way. To take an easy example – how possible is that a cable company that sells phone service would try to block a competitive phone service, such as Skype, which many see as the top P2P application? No need to answer that.

We just have to admit that this press release is indeed a major step forward in what concerns the management of broadband and the policy it implies:

The Commission also concluded that Comcast’s practices are not minimally intrusive, as the company claims, but rather are invasive and have significant effects. The Commission found that Comcast monitors its customers’ connections using deep packet inspection and then determines how it will route some connections based not on their destinations but on their contents. In essence, Comcast opens its customers’ mail because it wants to deliver mail not based on the address on the envelope but on the type of letter contained therein.

And when you come to think about it – it all started with a small number of users complaining about a few problems…