FCC’s Order Forces Transparency from Comcast

The Federal Communications Commission released the full text of an order Wednesday which gives Comcast 30 days to reveal its entire "unreasonable network management practices".

The FCC added that the company's "failure" to make known publicly and accurately its practices linked to the managing of traffic over its network has contributed to the current negative state of affairs. After the 30-day deadline, Comcast is constrained to forward a plan to the FCC in which to detail its methods of rehabilitating its procedure by the end of the year and also apply them.

The order is the result of the FCC's three-to-two decision against Comcast that we reported at the beginning of the month. Although the Commission clearly throws the book at Comcast regarding P2P throttling, and warns the company that noncompliance will have legal consequences, the agency issues no fine against the ISP. And at least one public interest group says the FCC has given the company too much time to change.

In the document, FCC chairman Kevin Martin compared the methods used by the major ISP to the U.S. Postal Service stamping “return to sender” on mail it refused to deliver.

“Today, the commission tells Comcast to stop, and to disclose to its subscribers how it is going to manage traffic on a going-forward basis,” Martin said in a statement accompanying the order. “We therefore take another important step to ensure that all consumers have unfettered access to the Internet.”

Quite notable is a certain, radical characteristic of this order that we’d like to point to – the highlighting of the net neutrality importance:

"We invite Free Press [a complainant in the case] and other members of the public to keep a watchful eye on Comcast as it carries out this relief," the Commission concludes. "Using the information provided by Comcast, pursuant to this Order, as well as information submitted by the public, we will closely monitor the company's network management practices."

All those for whom network neutrality is more than a mere abstract syntagm hailed the FCC order as a triumph in terms of consumer rights. Free Press policy director Ben Scott’s statement is pretty indicative:

"This order marks a major milestone in Internet policy. For years, the FCC declared that it would take action against any Internet service provider caught violating the online rights guaranteed by the agency. Today, the commission has delivered on that promise.”