Comcast Did The Right Internet Thing

Comcast was doing the right thing when it throttled back bandwidth hogs to prevent degradation of its Internet service, and it's a shame that the FCC is not just rejecting the petitions out of hand.

P2P — ignoring for the moment the fact that it was invented and is most often used for the piracy of intellectual property — exploits flaws in the Internet's protocols to seize priority over other activities, potentially disrupting VoIP and slowing other users' browsing. Internet not responding quickly enough? A P2P user in your neighborhood may be to blame.

Worse still, heavy regulation by the FCC could stall broadband deployment and limit broadband competition. Small and independent ISPs — the phone companies' and cable companies' competitors — will be disproportionately burdened by any requirement not to manage and mitigate P2P traffic, and could well be driven out of business by the FCC's dictum.

By the way: it's actually Ammori's Free Press group that is the “organized money.” (Comcast's lobbying has been so ineffective and disorganized that they may as well have done nothing.)

According to Free Press's Form 990 (a form required to be filed by all nonprofit corporations), Free Press's inside-the-Beltway lobbyists and lawyers spent more than $700,000 on activities related to “network neutrality.”

Who contributed that money? Free Press won't say which corporations, for profit or nonprofit, funded the effort.

Brett Glass, www.brettglass.com

In Harmony With Rothschild

Good Q&A with Harmonic senior manager of cable solutions and strategies Keith Rothschild. I especially agree with your assessment that narrowcast digital video services such as SDV will someday merge into the VOD system and become part of a unified video delivery platform. I would also toss in all manner of digital video advertising into this platform.

Michael Pasquinilli, Duluth, Ga.