Comcast Facing Backlash After Hearing
After a hearing into Comcast Corp.’s Internet policies this week, the company faces a backlash of bad publicity and increasing skepticism about the way the telecommunications giant runs its high-speed Internet service.
Critics have denounced Comcast for paying people to occupy seats in the cramped Harvard Law School lecture hall where the Federal Communications Commission hearing was held, preventing many critics from gaining admittance. Comcast officials said they were merely trying to save enough seats for company executives. But Josh Silver, executive director of the Internet activist group Free Press, said the hired guests stayed on, preventing many Comcast critics from attending the hearing.
There are about 300 seats in the lecture hall, and when they were all filled people were turned away.
“Comcast had these guys sit through the first entire half of the day to keep those seats full,” Silver said.
Despite having friends in the audience, Comcast took a verbal beating at Monday’s hearing, from FCC commissioners and hostile witnesses alike. The controversy over Comcast’s network management policies has helped revive the once-dormant debate on “Net neutrality,” the concept of forcing Internet companies to treat all data on their networks exactly alike.
Companies like Google Inc. and online video provider Vuze Inc., which use the Internet to distribute their services, say Net neutrality is vital to their businesses. But Internet providers like Comcast say there are legitimate business and technical reasons for them to offer different levels of service to different kinds of traffic.
Broadband providers designed their network for users who mostly swap e-mails and visit websites - tasks which don’t transmit, or upload, very much data. So broadband systems are designed to receive, or download, data much faster than they can upload it. “We have to engineer and manage the network for typical usage of a vast majority of customers,” said Mitch Bowling, Comcast’s senior vice president of online services.
But these days, many Internet subscribers use peer-to-peer software that lets thousands of Internet users share large files by uploading and downloading them to each others’ computers. So when a computer with BitTorrent downloads a TV show, it starts uploading the same show to other users. As a result, many Internet users now upload far more traffic than broadband providers expected. And Bowling said just a few of these users can consume most of the capacity on a neighborhood Internet “node,” which may serve several hundred households.
Comcast copes with the problem by sometimes slowing down BitTorrent data uploads from its customers’ computers. Last year, BitTorrent users complained about problems on the Comcast network, but the company refused to confirm the policy until last October. Comcast still insists it has done nothing wrong. “We have to engineer and manage the network for typical usage of a vast majority of customers,” said Bowling. “We are simply managing the network for the greater good.”
But Vuze, which filed the FCC complaint that led to Monday’s hearing, uses BitTorrent to send videos to its subscribers. Comcast’s policy to slow these file transfers could hurt Vuze’s business. Indeed, the company argued that Comcast could use “network management” as an excuse to fend off Vuze’s challenge to Comcast’s cable TV business. “By degrading the high-quality video content by which Vuze differentiates itself in the marketplace, network operators can seek a competitive edge,” said Vuze in its FCC complaint.
Virtually everyone who spoke at the hearing agreed that Comcast should provide far more information about how it manages its network. But there’s less uniformity about whether to regulate the practice or ban it altogether.
Free Press wants Net neutrality legislation that would make it illegal for networks to discriminate against particular kinds of Internet traffic, such as BitTorrent. The group’s general counsel, Marvin Ammori, said if Comcast installed better technology, it would be able to handle BitTorrent traffic with little trouble. But Comcast has said it will reduce its capital expenditures this year compared with 2007.
Comcast’s Bowling said that merely improving the network won’t eliminate the need to throttle back some kinds of traffic. He said peer-to-peer programs like BitTorrent tend to use more bandwidth as it becomes available, so network clutter doesn’t get better with more capacity. “You can’t outrun this problem by building more bandwidth,” he said.
US Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who attended the hearing, favors Net neutrality, but said Comcast may have to manage its data traffic because of the way the company designed its network. The real problem, said Markey, is a lack of competition.
In most communities there are no more than two broadband providers - the cable TV company and the phone company. These companies have already attached wires to all local homes. A would-be rival would have to spend millions building wired networks of their own - a massive barrier to competition.
Markey favors an “unbundling” policy, in which the federal government would require cable and phone companies to sell wholesale access to the lines going into consumers’ homes. This would let many companies get into the Internet access business without having to string their own wires.
In an unbundled world, said Markey, Net neutrality will take care of itself. Companies that discriminate against BitTorrent traffic would lose business to those that didn’t. “Competition is a proxy for regulation,” he said.
Markey acknowledged that Congress might not embrace his idea. But he said the only alternative is a Net neutrality law that could saddle Internet access providers with burdensome regulations. “If unbundling isn’t possible,” said Markey, “then Net neutrality is going to be the rule of the road.”
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
© 2008 Boston Globe
This is the thin edge of the wedge, folks.
Comcast first appears to be the problem, but they are just a symptom. The real problem is content providers who want to turn the Internet into another broadcast medium. When Disney gets premium access to web surfers, the access of small Internet service providers (like myself) will suffer. Eventually, you’ll have two choices: either pay an outrageous fee to make sure your content gets through, or suffer through having your website painfully, slowly paint, a line every few seconds, sending your viewers off to find something faster.
Net Neutrality effectively means the ghettoization of anything but the corporate message. Which is exactly what big business wants, because the Internet is effectively the only medium they do not currently control.
Beware the prescient words of Bill Moyers: “News is what powerful people don’t want you to hear; everything else is just publicity.“
Bill Moyers for president!
Boy, I was lamely thinking that I was a COMCAST customer, but nooooo — it’s really Dizzney, Stony and Faux
Immortal Technique: “Read niggar, read.”
Better still, the Fruit of Islam hit man in ‘The Wire,’
who asked his body guard, ‘who’s the most dangerous person in America?’ His associate shrugs, no answer. His bow tied interlocutor continues, ‘a black man with a library card.’
Eventually, broadband bandwidths will grow to exceed any necessity for Comcast to ‘throttle back’ on any clients.
If Comcast’s position is just, then it can only be upheld temporarily.
i knew comcast was up to no good. but they do provide a fairly reliable cable signal, though they keep dropping channels i like (like c-span2). so, like our election system, i minimally support them on a regular basis. the phone company is more careful about building expectations. they, too, get my monthly support. isn’t the company in france called alcatel? i believe they supply high speed internet access to all french people, or at least families. how are they handling this challenge?
i’ll bet they don’t buy surrogates to keep interested french people out of hearings.
The internet has started to look like a potentially dangerous and subversive place to the powers-that-be, so just as television news (not that it was any great shakes to begin with) has become infotainment, so too will the internet be clotted and clogged with huge, inane video transmissions and music files. The idea is to crowd out any purveyors of independent information and/or ideas that might actually make people think, rather than just consume entertainment. A beneficial side effect will be increased profits for for internet service providers that toe the line. Be prepared to hear much more about the circumvention of copyright by users of BitTorrent, and nothing about the small, independent software providers who legitimately distribute their product via torrent because, of course, they are also potentially subversive. (I have heard people seriously propose that the Linux operating system is a dastardly plot against the benevolent and capitalistic Microsoft whose velvet-covered jackboot rests so heavily on the necks of almost every PC user.)
No internet service provider is going to invest one red cent into improving their network until this issue is settled to THEIR satisfaction, meaning the eventual transformation of the internet into a gigantic mass-entertainment pipeline. And unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a thing that can be done about it.
Information distribution systems that rely on expensive technology will always be at risk of domination by the wealthy.
I predict pamphleteering and garage presses will come back into relevance.
-matti
A technical side note: Comcast is (was, still is primarily) a cable-TV provider. Their ISP business is built on their installed cable-TV infrastructure. Somebody please tell me if I’m wrong, but they do not (to my knowledge) use telephone lines to provide internet access.
Now, if I remember correctly, one big difference between cable-internet and aDSL internet access is that with cable, you and whoever else is wired to your local neighborhood “node” share a maximum bandwidth. So if the kid down the street is using BitTorrent to get a 4GB DVD movie, you’re going to be slogging through molasses when you are online until little Billy is finished.
Your neighbor, who has aDSL through the phone company, is happily surfing along despite the fact that the guy across the street (who also gets aDSL through the same ISP as you) is downloading that very same 4GB file. Why is this so? aDSL subscribers don’t “share” a maximum bandwidth with their neighbors: the technology is simply different.
So, a note to Comcast: suck it up, dickheads. Your infrastructure is outdated. Your business model was/is short-sighted. Your venture into being an ISP was a risk, and you failed. Quit your whining, and stop trying to effect a fundamental change in how the internet works just to try to hold on to market share against the rise of other forms of video delivery to consumers. Grow some balls and sit down and figure out how to participate in new markets instead of squashing them.
I was just about to take Comcast up on a 2 year contract bundle offer for digital telecasts plus phone service, local and long distance, plus ISP. As soon as I learned that they were running interference on the net neutrality I informed them that I changed my mind. I still have their tv service.
I’ve personally confirmed that comcast in my area at least is deleting sign-up e-mails to YouTube. Not merely throttling or delaying traffic, but deleting it altogether. I’ve got 3+ email accounts and was able to register/change my settings with like a 1-2 minute latency on my other e-mails. Setting my comcast account as the primary YouTube e-mail destination, I think I waited about a month or so — and NEVER got a response. Comcast isn’t merely throttling traffic, it’s apparently outright deleting it on occasion.
I wonder if they do that when people submit job applications, IRS tax returns, online orders, or anything else along those lines. Interesting society we live in.
It’s astounding that the comcast monopoly has been able to steadily knickle and dime the end user, and the end user tolerates it. Aside from the programming, most of which is consumer agitating tripe: Discovery Channel non-science, the celebration of environmental destruction, and, of course, the military industrial alternate universe -
The expense for premium comcast services puts them out of reach for most, aside from wealthy key markets. A low cost offering replicates what you’ve been able to get off the air for free. (nb - Get out your rabbit ears for HD signals-free in most major markets)
Comcast’s behavior is typical when their goal is control of the end users.
(nb - For all Torrent fans, wrap your kit in TLS, comcast can’t tell what the traffic is)
I’m quite happy with my present ISP provider (Qwest) who is
also my telephone provider, which is BTW, one of only a few
providers that told Bu$hco to “stuff it” when Bu$hco asked
them for access to their records. Qwest used to be U.S. West
which used to be Northwestern Bell.
Non of this would have happened if Ronald Reagan had de-
regulated the Comunications industry.
How about regulation of all telecommunication unless there is actual competition? Require all satellite and cable channels to be ala cart so that I don’t need to pay for fox news, mtv, and over 100 other channels to get the 10 or so channels I want. I am not require to buy ketchup just to get frozen French fries at the grocery store.
” thewonderingyou February 29th, 2008 8:36 pm
A technical side note: Comcast is (was, still is primarily) a cable-TV provider. Their ISP business is built on their installed cable-TV infrastructure. Somebody please tell me if I’m wrong, but they do not (to my knowledge) use telephone lines to provide internet access.
…”
Based on what I very recently read, there is significant impact on speed of Internet access with DSL; especially anyway. The reason stated is or was that DSL depends on a telephony backbone, so, f.e., people passing through a high or relatively high-usage telephony backbone will be impacted in terms of speed of access; because there are then far more potential people making use of the underlying tech. infrastructure.
But, and always based on what I read, having no personal experience with this, it depends on an accessor’s location, for DSL. DSL, I read, means needing to access the Internet with other subscribers of the same ISP, as well as all other users of the “invisible” telephony backbone; while cable doesn’t involve that tel. backbone at all. The latter means that there are far fewer potential users to compete with for speed at any “given” time.
And what I read said that this speed diminishment of DSL varies depending on where a person accessing the Internet is located. Whereever the tel. backbone has relatively to very low usage, the faster the DSL connection is or may be.
That apparently does not happen with cable connection. DSL is also ‘cable’, from what I gathered anyway, but a different kind and one that has the telephone system backbone for dependency. No telephony backbone, no DSL is possible; from what I so far understand.
Mike Corbeil,
Thank you for your response. I kept checking back to this article to see if anyone even noticed my post, as the technical issue I raised seems to me to be rather fundamental to Comcast’s “problem.”
I would, however, like to clarify some points that both you and I raised. When I lived in America, I had aDSL through ATT/SBC. I lived in a mostly-suburban area, though it was long-enough and well-enough developed to have concentrators (those streetside boxes that are basically like “routers” for individual aDSL users) quite close to my home. These devices are the “squeeze-point” for aDSL users–the transfer point from POTS telephone to the internet–when a concentrator was especially busy routing packets to me and my neighbors, I must profess the latency was extremely low. Speed was very constant: it was basically what was advertised by ATT/SBC in the contract, and the reasons for this are of a technical nature.
In contrast, a very good friend of mine also in the same city had cable-internet access. When his neighbors were asleep, he could realize rather impressive download speeds, up to the “maximum advertised” (but not really guaranteed in contract) by his ISP. On the other hand, at peak usage times, his connection dragged like a sausage through molasses. This was the effect of the “shared bandwidth” side of cable-internet technology. Speed is not constant, cannot be guaranteed, and without major–and ongoing–infrastructure investments, will invariably decline as broadband usage develops. Imagine what it’s like to be a cable-internet subscriber in a new subdevelopment and see your UL/DL speeds get progressively lower and lower as new neighbors move in. Imagine still what major effects high-bandwidth applications (such as BitTorrent or VoIP or media-on-demand) have on customer satisfaction, and–ultimately–a cable-internet ISP’s ability to be competitive with telco businesses providing aDSL with proximate concentrators.
I now live abroad, in a country where 10Mbps internet access is cheap through a formerly-state-owned, virtual-monopoly telco corporation. To attempt to avoid online-media addiction, I’ve limited myself to paying for just the 2Mbps aDSL rate, and the concentrator is just outside my front door. This is how most of the developed world gets their internet access, by the way. There are cable-internet ISPs here–for the really down-and-out-but-able-to-afford-cable-TV crowd–but they’re a dying breed, their fates sealed by the stark differences between the technological limitations of shared-bandwidth cable and predictably-fixed bandwidth offerings of aDSL.
So, I have had personal experience with at least the aDSL side of things, and have reliable information to draw upon for the cable-internet side of things as well. If you live a great distance from an aDSL concentrator, your only option may indeed be cable-internet. The tradeoff is between bandwidth and distance: in some areas, cable-internet may be better, but just a few high-bandwidth users can spoil all that, and cable-internet providers know this all too well.
Comcast is trying to protect itself from two threats: the delivery of higher-quality telephone lines to rural communities that would make aDSL a more reliable entry point to the internet, as well as the unstoppable growth of high-bandwidth internet applications.
The fact is, they would/will lose (spectacularly) on both fronts, and their only remaining option is to try to rig the system (through lobbying for an aneutral, tiered internet) to accommodate their chosen technology’s technological limitations. It’s a loser’s tactic, but unfortunately even the telco companies are eyeing the plan with dollar signs in their eyes, because they can easily become the remoras that travel with the sharks and benefit as well.
We must fight Comcast, the legislation for which they lobby, and all attempts towards stratification of the means to “get online.” We must fight to keep the internet “content-neutral.” This is extremely important. It’s not just a matter of whether or not you would have to pay more to access CommonDreams.Org, but whether or not you’d be able to access it at all. Make no mistake about it: the power granted by tiered internet access would be quickly usurped by those with the means to effect massive censorship in the medium most potent in the ability to disseminate the truth.
Comcast Broadband is a failed business entity. It should die.