Comcast Promises to Work Better with Vonage

Cable operator Comcast has announced a new collaboration with VoIP telephone service Vonage to help ensure Comcast’s network management techniques don’t interfere with the quality and availability of Vonage service to Comcast customers.

For many Vonage customers, quality of the VoIP service has been so unreliable that many have questioned whether the cable operator was deliberately degrading Vonage performance in order to sway customers to go with its own digital voice offerings, in a manner reminiscent of Comcast’s deliberate shutdown of some P2P traffic through packet forgery. Comcast has consistently denied the claims, and attributes disruptions in Vonage service to localized network congestion.

Under the new agreement, Vonage and Comcast will establish direct communications channels between their network operations centers to resolve customer issue; Vonage will also participate in testing network management technology Comcast plans to deploy to ensure its VoIP service operates as expected.

“This agreement helps Vonage to ensure that customers have the best possible Internet experience,” said Vonage CTO Louis Mamakos, in a statement. “Although we’re competitors with Comcast, this understanding helps our two companies work together to balance the needs of network management with consumers’ ability to freely access the services, applications and content of their choice.”