The IT Nerd

You know, I have to admit that sometimes you get blindsided. That’s how I feel as the news that Comcast is appealing the FCC ruling that keeps them from messing with filesharing traffic. Richard Korman of ZDNet received a message from Comcast along with a statement from David L. Cohen, Executive Vice President of Comcast:

“Although we are seeking review and reversal of the Commission’s network management order in federal court, we intend to comply fully with the requirements established in that order, which essentially codify the voluntary commitments that we have already announced, and to continue to act in accord with the Commission’s Internet Policy Statement. Thus, we intend to make the required filings and disclosures, and we will follow through on our longstanding commitment to transition to protocol-agnostic network congestion management practices by the end of this year. We also remain committed to bringing our customers a superior Internet experience.

We filed this appeal in order to protect our legal rights and to challenge the basis on which the Commission found that Comcast violated federal policy in the absence of pre-existing legally enforceable standards or rules. We continue to recognize that the Commission has jurisdiction over Internet service providers and may regulate them in appropriate circumstances and in accordance with appropriate procedures. However, we are compelled to appeal because we strongly believe that, in this particular case, the Commission’s action was legally inappropriate and its findings were not justified by the record.”

This pretty much proves what I said in this post some time ago. The FCC has no way to punish Comcast, and their order is not legally enforcable. The only thing that surprises me is that it took Comcast this long to call them on it. Of course Comcast is covering themselves just in case the appeal doesn’t go their way by continuing to implement everything that the order calls for them to do. But one has to think that this FCC order is about to get deep sixed.

Everybody’s favorite ISP Comcast has confirmed that it will continue to throttle service for its heaviest users during periods of congestion. Basically, the plan is that they will take action against specific users by significantly reducing their transfer rate for up to 20 minutes as opposed to throttling everything:

“The new system will move away from a focus on specific applications that hog Web traffic, [Comcast senior vice president and general manager of online services Mitch] Bowling said. Comcast will determine “in nearly real time” whether congestion is caused by a heavy user, he said.

“If in fact a person is generating enough packets that they’re the ones creating that situation, we will manage that consumer for the overall good of all of our consumers,” Bowling said.”

Of course they’re doing this in response to the half assed FCC ruling that came out not too long ago. The new system, reportedly dubbed “fair share” should be in place by the end of 2008.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t jump up and down for joy as Comcast is still employing throttling at the end of the day. But I guess the devil is in the details, so we’ll have to wait and see just what those details are. Then we can decide if Comast has made an brilliant move, or a Comcastic move.

This document (Warning: PDF) just appeared on the FCC site a few minutes ago. It is 67 pages long, but what it tells Comcast to do is in the following paragraph:

“Disclose the details of their unreasonable network management practices, submit a compliance plan describing how it intends to stop these unreasonable management practices by the end of the year, and disclose to both the Commission and the public the details of the network management practices that it intends to deploy following termination of its current practices.”

Great. Excecpt for a whole bunch of things:

1. The FCC order doesn’t actually punish Comcast in any way.
2. It doesn’t force them to do anything they didn’t plan to do after this story hit the media.
3. It may not even be enforceable in court.
4. Comcast continues to use forged packets to throttle upstream P2P traffic and will continue to do so until the end of the year.

I must be missing something here because I can’t see what purpose this order serves. Perhaps someone will enlighten me.