FCC Head Wants to Penalize Comcast

FCC chairman Kevin Martin says he plans to recommend cable operator Comcast be penalized for violating the FCC's open Internet principles.

In comments to the Associated Press, FCC chairman Kevin Martin has let it be known that he intends to recommend cable operator Comcast be penalized for violating the set of FCC principles that protect consumer’s access to the Internet. “The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet,” Martin told the AP. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

Comcast’s actions, in this case, would be the throttling of selected peer-to-peer networking traffic on the Comcast network. After initially denying any deliberate blocking of P2P traffic, Comcast eventually admitted it occasionally “delays” traffic to better manage its network. In this case, “delaying” traffic included forging reset packets on behalf of its customers, causing P2P transactions to shut down.

The principles involved here are an FCC’s Internet Policy statement issued in 2005 (PDF), which is often summed up as the “four freedoms” of the Internet mandated by the FCC: consumers are entitled to access any lawful content they like; they’re free to use any lawful application or service they like; they’re free to connect any legal device to the network they like;, and they’re entitled to competition amongst network, service, application, and content providers.

To sanction Comcast, Martin would need at least two other votes on the commission, but is likely to find support amongst its Democratic members, who have supported net neutrality principles. According to the AP report, Martin would like to see the FCC mandate that Comcast end P2P throttling, disclose its network management methodology to the FCC, and provide more information about its future network management plans.

In a related case in California, Comcast has recently argued that states can’t regulate its network management practices because they’re under the jurisdiction of the FCC, but at the same time Comcast isn’t required to abide by the “four freedoms” principles because they’re merely guidelines, not rules.