By Peter Kaplan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
The top U.S. communications
regulator said on Tuesday that an investigation of how Comcast
Corp manages its network had raised further concerns about
tactics the company has used to restrict Internet users who
share movies and other material.
Testifying before Senate lawmakers, U.S. Federal
Communications Commission ChairmanKevin Martin said Comcast
had used a "blunt" technique to impose broad restrictions on
peer-to-peer file-sharing.
"Contrary to some claims, it does not appear that this
technique was used only to occasionally delay traffic at
particular nodes suffering from network congestion at that
time," Martin said in prepared remarks before the Senate
Commerce Committee.
Martin also disputed the claim by Comcast that the FCC does
not have the legal authority to enforce its open-Internet
policy. He told the committee that the agency does not need any
new laws or regulations to take action.
"I do not believe any additional regulations are needed at
this time. But I also believe that the commission has a
responsibility to enforce the (open-Internet) principles that
it has already adopted," Martin said.
The FCC is looking into complaints from consumer groups
that cable operator Comcast violated those principles by
unreasonably hindering some file-sharing services, such as
BitTorrent, that distribute TV shows and movies.
Comcast issued a statement on Tuesday reiterating that it
believes its network management practices were a "reasonable
choice" and saying that it was switching to a new technique by
the end of the year.
DISCLOSE MORE
Martin has previously expressed concern about some Comcast
network practices, specifically that the company did not
disclose more to customers and application developers about the
way it manages traffic on its network.
Subsequently last month, Comcast announced it would change
the way it manages its network and cooperate with BitTorrent
and other critics to resolve the dispute. Comcast also said it
would partner with a second file-sharing company and help
create a "bill of rights" for consumers and Internet service
providers.
Comcast, which has more than 13 million broadband
subscribers, has denied impairing some applications and has
said it merely managed the system to deal with network
congestion for the good of all users.
In his prepared testimony for Tuesday's hearing, Martin
said that "based on the testimony we have so far, some users
were not able to upload anything they wanted and were unable to
fully use certain file-sharing software from peer-to-peer
networks."
Martin said the equipment Comcast used to delay traffic "is
typically deployed over a wider geographic or system area and
would therefore have impacted numerous nodes within a system
simultaneously."
"It appears that this equipment blocks the uploads of at
least a large portion of subscribers in that part of the
network, regardless of the actual levels of congestion at that
particular time," Martin said in his testimony.
The dispute over so-called network neutrality pits
open-Internet advocates against some service providers such as
Comcast, which say they need to take reasonable steps to manage
traffic on their networks.
The head of the cable industry's chief trade group also
testified at the hearing, telling lawmakers that concerns of
network neutrality advocates are "misplaced."
Kyle McSlarrow, head of the National Cable &
Telecommunications Association, said companies should be
allowed to manage their networks as they see fit to alleviate
congestion and combat illegal file-sharing.
McSlarrow said putting every network management technique
up for scrutiny "would severely hamper the ability of network
providers to ensure high-quality and reliable Internet access
for their subscribers."
(Reporting by Peter Kaplan; Editing by Brian Moss and Lisa
Von Ahn)
0 comments:
Post a Comment