Comcast To File Data Management Plan

Responds to FCC Claim That It Mismanaged High-Speed Internet Network

By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 9/19/2008 3:14:00 PM

Washington—Comcast Corp. was planning to file Friday evening its compliance plan in response to a Federal Communications Commission ruling that the cable company had been mismanaging its high-speed Internet network.

“As we previously announced in March, we are changing the way we manage network congestion by the end of this year,” said Sena Fitzmaurice, Comcast’s senior director of corporate communications and government affairs.

In August, the FCC ruled that Comcast violated the agency’s net neutrality principles by restricting peer-to-peer uploads during peak hours. Comcast is suing the FCC over the ruling.

Comcast planned to file four documents at the FCC, one explaining its current network management techniques and a second detailing its future network management practices.

“The new technique does not manage congestion based on the protocol or application a consumer uses,” Fitzmaurice said. “This new technique will ensure that all customers get their fair share of bandwidth every hour of the day.”

Comcast, Fitzmaurice said, would post the documents Friday on its comcast.net Web page under the network management category.

Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, which filed the network management complaint against Comcast at the FCC, said: “We hope that with today’s filing, Comcast will finally lift the heavy veil of secrecy that shrouds its illegal blocking. After more than a year of deception and evasion, Comcast has left its millions of subscribers with many questions unanswered.”