FCC May Slap Comcast With Site Complaint

logoComcast may be interfering with content delivered by some peer-to-peer sites, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said as much during a Senate Commerce Committee meeting on Tuesday. Martin said Comcast was "degrading" or blocking peer-to-peer content--and not necessarily because of traffic issues.

Comcast, which sells Internet services to consumers, could be getting a "complaint" from the FCC as a result. The FCC said Comcast was targeting peer-to-peer application BitTorrent.

Even if this were true, several Congressmen said the FCC has no jurisdiction over Comcast's activities. The FCC does have guidelines concerning Internet practices.

In a statement, Comcast said: "Comcast does not, has not and will not block any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services."

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It added: "We have acknowledged that we manage peer-to-peer traffic in a limited manner to minimize network congestion. While we believe this network management was a reasonable choice, we are now working with a variety of companies in the Internet community and confirm our March announcement that we will move to a protocol-agnostic network-management technique no later than Dec. 31, 2008."

At the same meeting, Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, said there was no evidence of any anti-competitive moves by any cable operators who handle Internet services.

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