Hands off the Internet asks FCC to look into Comcast bandwith delays

So, the anti-net neutrality group Hands off the Internet chimed in on the debate about Comcast blocking/delaying BitTorrent and other traffic. You will remember, of course, that Comcast was caught in pretty much a bald-faced lie when the AP discovered that the cable company was delaying file uploads. Considering all the noise being generated about Comcast's actions rejuvenating the net neutrality movement, you wouldn't necessarily expect HOTI to come out swinging against Comcast. But that's just what happened last week when cochairs Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf sent a letter to the FCC.

Comcast stands accused of violating the FCC’s four principles. The company has responded by offering the rationale for the actions it took. Now the ball is in your court.

The FCC must determine if any of its four principles have in fact been violated. If not, and the process has been fair and open, then so be it. If after reviewing the facts, the FCC determines that the company has been in violation, then the FCC must determine the remedy.

How to explain HOTI's letter? Harold Feld, senior VP for the Media Access Project, writes on the Public Knowledge policy blog that the action can be viewed as good ol' fashioned competition.

Comcast, which directly competes with Verizon, would like to have a network as stable and fast as Verizon’s FIOS. But they don’t. Instead, they have a network that has serious problems keeping up with the way customers want to use it. Comcast could spend the money to upgrade to fiber the way Verizon did and actually have a network that works like Verizon’s FIOS system. But Comcast doesn’t want to do that either.

So Comcast has opted for the much cheaper solution. They will advertise that they have a network as good as FIOS, but they really don’t. This strategy is very cost efficient. Except that users trying to use their 5 or 10 mbps connection all the time, at maximum capacity, just like in the ads, find out real quick that Comcast’s network is not as good as FIOS. (Not that Verizon is trying to attract the 24-hr BitTorrent crowd, mind, but at least they handle the load better.)

So again, Comcast has a choice on how to manage its very real network constraint. It can come clean with subscribers and start setting realistic terms of service and advertising realistic speeds/capacity (for example by going back to metered pricing). Except that if they do, people will use FIOS instead of Comcast. It can spend billions of dollars to upgrade all the way to fiber. But that will cut into profit margins, take lots of time, and Comcast will still lose customers to FIOS. But those should be Comcast’s choices, because Verizon guessed right, Comcast guessed wrong, and Verizon therefore reaps the free market rewards of having the guts and the foresight to anticipate customer need, and forces its rivals to upgrade to fiber, and a happy ending for everyone just like the neo-cons promised, yes?

No, because Comcast continues to lie to customers about what they're offering and then shapes their network accordingly, impersonating users to do TCP resets, etc.

Looked at this way, you can see why the telcos (and therefore their sock-puppet HOTI) would be a shade peeved about Comcast’s decision to “manage” their network in such a “cost effective” but deceptive manner. Because if Comcast can keep pretending its network is just as good as FIOS when it isn’t, and can even lie when asked about it directly by customers, then Verizon just wasted a couple of bazillion dollars and took a two-year stock beating for NOTHING.