FCC Chairman Kevin Martin made a bit of news at CES today by saying the Commission will investigate a complaint filed at the agency last fall regarding Comcast's policies to interfere with its customers' ability to upload files via P2P technology. Here's what Martin said when asked by the Consumer Electronics Association's CEO Gary Shapiro if the agency plans to investigate the complaint: "Sure, we're going to investigate and make sure that no consumer is going to be blocked."
He also added: "The question is going to arise: Are they reasonable network practices?" When they have reasonable network practices, they should disclose those and make those public."
I ask you: what else could the chief regulator of the U.S. communications industry say when asked if his agency would investigate a complaint on this hot potato issue? Martin couldn't very well have said that the FCC wouldn't investigate the allegations. Particularly if he were sitting on stage at one of the world's biggest trade shows, with thousands of reporters physically or electronically present.
So, it's hard to get too worked about this "probe" because Martin had no choice but to say the Commission would investigate. The whole investigation might end up a charade, or a half-hearted effort, but not because Kevin Martin wants to cater to a big corporate interest.
The FCC chief's enmity toward the cable industry is widely known and I suspect that if he could, Martin would torch Comcast on any issue he could...except this one. A legitimate, resource-intensive examination of how Comcast manages P2P could suck the FCC into a thicket of thorny issues, including whether the Internet should be regulated, whether broadband providers -- not just cable operators -- should face sanctions for complex network management practices and to what extent unhampered use of the Internet outweighs operators' rights to exploit their networks as they see fit.
That kind of messy investigation would be a headache for the FCC, which, under free market Republican Martin, isn't ideologically inclined to intervene on much of anything anyway (except on pet projects such as indecency and cable a la carte). Further fueling skepticism that the Commission will engage in a tough investigation is the fact that Hollywood wants broadband providers to interfere with P2P applications.
Still, Martin's public commitment to investigating the complaint is an opening for consumer advocates to garner more attention for the issue. Public Knowledge, one of the public interest groups behind the complaint against Comcast, said in a statement that it
is pleased to see that the Chairman and the Commission are willing to stand by their principles to protect American consumers. We look forward to FCC proceedings that will set determine what are legitimate uses of power by telecom companies, and which are not.
Media advocacy group Free Press, which also participated in the complaint, echoed this sentiment.
We are encouraged by the Chairman's statements today about investigating Comcast's blocking of peer-to-peer traffic. We hope the Chairman's statements, made two months after we filed our complaint, will lead to immediate and accelerated action at the FCC on the critical issue of whether Comcast, AT&T and other Internet service providers can block the services people want to use. The FCC must stop these would-be gatekeepers and fine companies that censor the free flow of information.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:46 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Comcast is really pulling out all the stops at CES this year. On top of its big announcement regarding its Project Infinity, the top cable operator is also touting the fact that it's now the fourth biggest residential phone service provider in the U.S.
It's an impressive feat given Comcast's relatively late start in launching digital voice services -- the big push on VoIP began about three years ago, although Comcast acquired AT&T Broadband which had been offering circuit-switched telephony services since 2000 or so. Comcast doesn't offer any numbers in its press release to indicate who the top three providers are, but look at these charts.
Comcast is the fourth largest residential telephony provider, following AT&T, Verizon and Qwest. But the drop off from Qwest to Comcast is substantial -- Comcast has less than half the home phone customers that the smallest of the former Baby Bells serves. Maybe that's why the press release is curiously absent on statistics.
When it comes to total telephone lines, Comcast is arguably the nation's fifth largest phone company, if you look at only facilities-based, regional network-oriented voice providers, right behind AT&T, Verizon, Qwest and Embarq.
One thing Comcast doesn't tout is the fact that with Vonage's growth slow-down and its own rapid gains in the voice sector, it's also the nation's number one VoIP provider.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:13 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The nation's number one cable company Comcast will unveil a significant new initiative today when CEO Brian Roberts delivers a keynote speech at CES (webcast will be here): a plan to deliver a significantly increased amount of TV and Internet-based video. The goal is to give consumers virtually unlimited access to content through a combination of both traditional TV-based combined with Internet-based on-demand access through Comcast's Fancast web site.
Over the past several months, Comcast has quietly been expanding the on-demand TV and film content made available on Fancast, to the point where more than 3,000 hours of full TV episodes from most of the top networks are available at no charge. Fancast also offers a number of full-length films, mostly, it seems, from Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp. and NBC.
Comcast has struggled with Hollywood to gain the TV on-demand rights to recently released films, although the operator contends that its current selection of 300 films will radically expand to 6,000 under a plan called "Project Infinity." In combination with Comcast's plan to offer very fast Internet service, called wideband, another initiative to get some PR juice at Roberts' CES keynote today, the operator is clearly trying to stave off the competitive threat posed by satellite and web-based rivals.
Fancast will also feature some add-on bells and whistles, such as the ability to program DVRs remotely and expanded entertainment databases, a la IMDB, that will no doubt enhance traffic and raise the company's visibility as a key player in the emerging world of Internet-based video. Comcast's more assertive embrace of online video, not to mention its push on wideband Internet access, comes at a low point for the operator and is a refreshing turn-around. Last month Comcast stunned investors by lowering guidance for the year, saying that the economy and competitive forces had taken a toll on its ability to maintain predicted growth.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:50 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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