• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, July 10, 2008

With the FCC still investigating Comcast for its traffic shaping practices, the company has announced a deal to work with Voice over Internet Protocol provider Vonage to address network management practices.

"Although we're competitors with Comcast, this understanding helps our two companies work together to balance the needs of network management with consumers' ability to freely access the services, applications and content of their choice," Louis Mamakos, Vonage chief technology officer, said in a statement.

Comcast is spinning this announcement as part of its larger attempt to adhere to net neutrality principles. Last year, The Associated Press found that Comcast delayed peer-to-peer traffic, sparking advocates to file complaints with the FCC. The company said it was only trying to manage congestion on its network. Then, earlier this year, Comcast said it would develop a protocol-agnostic technique for traffic management.

But Comcast's decision may have come too late to placate the FCC, which is mulling whether to impose a penalty on the company for violating a 2005 policy statement stating that Internet service providers shouldn't discriminate between applications or types of content.

Comcast's critics reacted with skepticism to the company's announcement. Net neutrality group Free Press called Comcast's announcement "baffling." The group said there's no reason for Comcast to say it's working with Vonage when the company is already supposedly committed to net neutrality.

"We are baffled as to why it was necessary for Vonage to strike a network management agreement with Comcast to guarantee that their services are not degraded or blocked," Free Press general counsel Marvin Ammori said in a statement. "Such anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices are already against the law. And beyond that, Comcast has been on the record as saying that they do nothing to deter their customers' use of VoIP."