Unit649
I B U, Who U B?
Premium
join:2000-01-22
Stockton, CA
 ·Comcast
2 edits | A surprise? NOT
What? You're all surprised by this? A slap on the hand. Bad Comcast! Bad!
Maybe this will mean them FINALLY coming out with a tool for the end user that allows us to check our ACTUAL consumption. If they are going to enforce caps, they will have to be "transparent". 
And heck, thats all I really want. If you're going to set a limit, I want to have the ability to see how close to the limit I might be.
(Although, honestly, if they go with 250, I'd be lucky to even consume a third of that, but I'd like the ability to CHECK that.)
Ohhhh....the downloaders are going to be UPSET at this. But we shouldn't be shocked. Its not like Comcast said a dirty word on Public TV or showed a body part or something. |
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IPingUPing
N4BFR
Premium
join:2002-08-30
Smyrna, GA
clubs: | No Law = No Fine
That's because they didn't violate a law or regulation, just some vague "policy statement" that has no teeth. |
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PrntRhd
join:2004-11-03
Fairfield, CA
·Comcast
·Comcast Formerly ..
| FCC sanctions negligible
This is posturing.
FCC says they "have authority" but the sanctions are negligible to keep Comcast from suing and claiming FCC doesn't have that authority. Eventually there may be a test case on FCC's authority but this vague example would be a difficult to base a court case on. |
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rdmiller
join:2005-09-23
Richmond, VA | It's just a policy statement
It has no teeth. If the FCC can get the largest cable provider to accept the policy, that's a small step in the right direction. |
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S_engineer
join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL
·Comcast
| This is sad....
that in this day and age we have no broadband policy and no federal agency with any grasp of how consumers are getting the shaft while our country spirals downwards with regards to telecommunication policies or lack of.
I suppose this idiot Martin thinks progress is thousands of morons standing in line to pay hundreds of dollars for an iphone. How pathetic!
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Next on Maury Povich's "Wheel-O-Dad", Katrina chooses between 80 potential fathers! |
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JTRockville
Data Ho
Premium,MVM
join:2002-01-28
Rockville, MD
clubs: | ..."regarding its PASTcustomer-oriented practices"
So, Comcast is free to continue whatever blocking/throttling policy they choose, in secret, as long as they describe what they did in the past? |
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TKJunkMail
Enjoy the sun
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Avalon, NJ
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Comcast
| reply to IPingUPing
Re: No Law = No Fine
said by IPingUPing  :That's because they didn't violate a law or regulation, just some vague "policy statement" that has no teeth. I agree. If Martin had pushed the FCC to do something more than this hand slap, he would have lost in court for sure. He is still hoping Comcast won't sue despite this weak censure.
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My BLOG .. .. Internet News .. .. My Web Page |
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SLD
Premium
join:2002-04-17 | What do you expect?
What do you expect from the "business friendly" Bush administration??? |
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N3OGH
Bear patrol must be working like a charm
Premium
join:2003-11-11
Philly burbs
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| OK, we get it. YOU DON'T LIKE BUSH.
Who would've thunk it.
I'm not terribly fond of the guy either, but what is it with this obsession with George Bush?
Everything wrong in the world isn't his fault. Get over it....
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Petty people are disproportionably corrupted by petty power… |
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LegendsOfBatman
@rr.com
| reply to Unit649
Re: A surprise? NOT
said by Unit649 :Ohhhh....the downloaders are going to be UPSET at this. But we shouldn't be shocked. Its not like Comcast said a dirty word on Public TV or showed a body part or something. The problem with that statement is, if Comcast is not telling people they are limited to how much downloading they can do, then they are wrong. I don't care if someone is downloading a terabyte a second, 24/7, its none of their business. To me, its akin to going to a buffet, and being told you can have as much as you want, so long as you don't have more than 3 plates. At a buffet you will have some who will fill 25 plates full, and some who will have only 1 or 2.
Personally, I dont download a lot. But, if I do, then why should I be punished if I download a movie this month, but not next?
Comcast should just take people's money, and shut up. |
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boast
join:2005-09-03
Miami, FL | reply to N3OGH
Re: What do you expect?
uh huh.... and world hunger just "magically" appeared out of nowhere |
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smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home | So?
What good would a fine be unless it was hundreds of millions or even over a billion dollars?
They aren't going to bat an eye at $10,000, $100,000, or $1,000,000. Probably not even at $10,000,000. |
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jarthur31
join:2006-04-14
Carlsbad, NM | reply to SLD
Re: What do you expect?
Congress is run by your beloved Democrats. If you're gonna spit at least include everyone responsible. |
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NOZIREV
join:2008-07-10
New Bedford, MA | But
how can you fine someone if they have not broken the law? i agree that they should at least tell you what is acceptable use of bandwidth and not be so vague about. |
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funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Skype
4 edits | A poll -- If Comcast SHOULD be fined...
...what should they be fined for?
•For blocking P2P uploads
•after telling the government the year before that network neutrality was not needed because they would never degrade traffic
•then doing so, in secret
•using forged packets
•even when the network was not congested
•24-hours a day, 7-day a week
•and when the content was public domain like the Holy Bible and barbershop quartet music
•then lying/diffusing/deflecting about it
•repeatedly
•constantly
•blaming the entire cable industry with their "they do it too" defense (later, only Cox was found to be doing it too)
•or for breaking Lotus-Notes
•while still expressing no limits on the types or amounts of usage
•pitting user-vs-user in a campaign against "Bandwidth Hogs"
•and as the investigation opened, they quietly changed the online TOS just days before an FCC filing that referred to it
•and then lied about notifying millions of users about the TOS change with a story on Comcast.net
•and then they packed the Harvard hearing with sleeping bums bussed from Boston
•for telling the FCC that they had no authority
•for making great-sounding hollow "deals" with BitTorrent (when the real complainant was Vuze)
•or with Pando for P4P (which doesn't help Comcast's problem one bit)
•or Pando (again, for the Broadband Bill of Rights)
•or ________ (another P2P company nobody heard of)
•or for when it refused to attend the FCC hearing at Stanford
•for berating Kevin Martin
•or another non-Internet Standard "Protocol Agnostic" (whatever that means) congestion "management" regime
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
HTTP is the new Bandwidth Hog...
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NN of course
@comcast.net
| Comcast interfering with barackobama.com traffic?
I've repeatedly had trouble watching videos on barackobama.com when on comcast - they play, but there's constant rebuffering - so the audio constantly cuts out and resumes. Is this because comcast is fucking with the traffic? It sure seems so. If I'm on a different connection, things are fine. Speed tests show my comcast Internet connection to be good (>10x faster than the video traffic) and »192.168.100.1/ shows a flawless connection.
If I pause the video, the buffers slowly fill and if I wait several minutes before resuming, the video plays fine. It comes in at an anemic 40KB/sec or so.
YouTube videos play just fine. |
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SLD
Premium
join:2002-04-17
·Comcast
| reply to jarthur31
Re: What do you expect?
Your assumption is wrong...as usual. I dislike the Democrats even more for allowing this BS to continue. I'm an independant. BTW N3OGH, the administration is responsible for the FCC, so yes, when things go wrong, it is fair to blame the head (POTUS). |
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Kearnstd
Elf Wizard
Premium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ | reply to IPingUPing
Re: No Law = No Fine
besides a big fine would just be passed to the customer. not that the FCC cares about the customers any more then the providers do.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports |
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funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
| reply to funchords
Re: A poll -- If Comcast SHOULD be fined...
said by funchords :•or ________ (another P2P company nobody heard of) Ah, found it. GridNetworks |
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TIGERON
join:2008-03-11
Pacifica, CA
·AT&T DSL Service
·Comcast
| Letter to the FCC
This is a letter that a friend of mine wrote to the FCC about his and the experience of many former subscribers by this abusive company that has a monopoly in many areas of the country.
Dear Sirs,
I wanted to make you aware of a situation a couple people including myself ran into with Comcast in 2007.
We were disconnected for using the internet too much after 4 years of on time payments to the company. The advertisement we received when we signed up said "Unlimited usage for a flat monthly fee". I can show you the advertisement today if you're interested. It's archived in archive.org's web site.
We use P2P along with dozens of other applications and web sites. I can imagine we're probably using the Internet very heavily. But in this world of online multimedia, online banking and so on, isn't that encouraged?
Comcast terminated our Internet for 12 months along with another family 6 houses down within a month time and for the same reason. We were downloading too much using services such as P2P and Web streaming video.
The company refused to provide either of us any guidance on what is acceptable usage. Only that we were using it too much and had to reduce our usage. At one point I was told they were not allowed to disclose that information to the customer. And their online documentation didn't provide any clue what is acceptable use.
So why is Comcast terminating people's accounts if they provide no guidance on acceptable usage and the content is legal? P2P isn't just used for evil. There are businesses built on top of it providing content which they created themselves. P2P provides a wonderful vehicle to share this content. However Comcast wants to restrict or terminate what people can do with it. Totally unacceptable in my opinion.
We contacted Comcast and spoke with over 4 dozen representatives from a dozen departments over 3 weeks including their escalation department. The solution they offered was to install a dedicated line for up to $10,000 and our monthly service cost would be $2,000.
In a world in which fiber to the home is normal in developed countries and costs less than $30 a month (US Dollars) for 100 Meg up/down speeds, I'm amazed this is acceptable especially when America invented the Internet. And yet we have one of the worst in the world compared to most developed countries.
I've been pushing for the NII fiber infrastructure which President Bill Clinton and Al Gore enacted in 1994. Billions of dollars have been given to the Telco's for 45 meg up/down fiber to the home by 2006 I believe. Telco's are still reaping the benefits of those tax dollars and we have yet to see the expected push by the Industry to build it out.
I'm also pushing for Utopia fiber to the home here in my State of Utah. However it's those very same Telco's along with Comcast which have been fighting to prevent Utopia's build out which would bring the free market into the Internet sector. You are free to choose from many companies with most services today. But not the Internet. Citizens would be able to switch providers rather than take the abuse a regional monopoly (such as Comcast) has been dishing out.
I hope this has helped in some way in understanding how the company has operated in addition to their filtering of Internet traffic.
I would hate to wake up to the day which my children try to bring up google.com, download say the firefox web browser or download a legal P2P file and can't because of filters or are terminated because the company doesn't like what you are legally doing. But so far I haven't seen anything that suggests this isn't on the way. We're already seeing the beginning of restricting traffic.
Companies such as Comcast are also content providers. So if I retrieve content from another service (which I frequently did over 4 years) I'm a bad customer as they don't get a dime from it. They see revenue only from the flat Internet rate I'm charged.
This is a conflict of interest!
I've been writing letters to my Local and Federal Senators and Representatives to find some way to resolve this problem with no success. Technically Comcast has broken no law which allows them to get away with this outrageous policy.
Now we are using a service for Internet access which is at least 5 times slower than what Comcast offered. We could go back with Comcast as the 12 months termination is over. Comcast even had the audacity to send us mailers asking to come back!!
Would you go back to a company which refused to resolve an abusive experience?
We're not. And neither is the family just down the street.
Most companies would be interested in fixing a problem if they did something wrong and especially injured a customer. Rather than fix the problem, they make up excuses and break promises. Even after bringing this problem to the attention of the newspapers and local TV, the problem is unresolved.
If you wish more information I'm willing to provide it including provide the contact information for that other family. You might be interested in just how similar our experience was. They are also on the slower DSL service only because there is nothing better available unless we move to another country.
I implore you to help fix this problem. If the Internet is so important that Congress must debate Internet taxes and pass laws banning their passage, shouldn't we consider it as important as any other Utility such as water or electricity?
Thank you for your patience.
I look forward to the FCC's actions in encouraging the growth of the Internet in America. |
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