FCC Hearing Speakers Lash Out at Comcast

The FCC hearing brought together a number of disparate interest groups and dozens of speakers condemning Comcast for infringing upon the neutrality of the Internet.

The FCC public hearing, in a session hosted by Stanford Law School, focused on its fact finding mission on broadband network management practices.Several large Internet service providers attended, including Comcast Communications, AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon.

Several free Internet access advocates and representatives of radio stations were also present before the Federal Communications Commission.

Comcast, the nation's second-largest ISP, has been accused of interfering with connections on users who send large personal files through the Internet, particularly digital video and audio music using BitTorrent peer-to-peer filesharing software.

This practice was condemned by a number of interest groups and dozens of speakers who accuse the Internet Service Provider of infringing upon the neutrality of the Internet.

Comcast has claimed that users who send large audio and video files absorbs bandwidth which interferes with users who send only email and other lightweight data forms. The company also has claimed that it is graciously helping to put a stop to online illegal pirating.

However, most speakers didn't see it that way. Most speakers argued that Comcast service practices on frequent users of BitTorrent cause inbound connections to disconnect during midstream from computers.

Comcast installed new software or equipment on its networks that began selectively interfering with some of its customers' TCP/IP connections around May 2007. The most widely discussed interference was with certain BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing communications, but other protocols have also been affected.

"No one should be messing with the openness of the Internet," Commissioner Michael Copps said. "It's going to be a major fight with powerful forces on the other side."

Copps said he favors "an enforceable principle of non-discriminatory behavior to our Internet policy statement. This won't be easy, but that's exactly why we need a for-sure enforcement process ... to sift through the complaints... and over time establish a precedent."

"I think what the commission is focused on is 'What are the appropriate policies from a consumer perspective, making sure that consumers continue to have access to all the information that's available over the Internet.' And I think that we'll continue to end up focusing on that underlying principal, which harkens back to the networking principles we adopted back in 2005," FCC Chairman Martin said.

"I just want to make sure that we did try to make this as open and transparent as possible," he said.

There is no timetable for FCC action at this time. The commission will remain in fact-finding mode for at least several months.