FCC Network Management Inquiry on Comcast Seen Ending
An FCC network management inquiry on Comcast (CD June 17 p2) seems to be ending. Staffers appear to have nearly all information they're thought to deem needed for FCC action, said agency and industry officials. The inquiry into whether Comcast violated any of four agency Internet freedom principles by slowing peer-to-peer file transfers has taken longer than FCC Chairman Kevin Martin expected, as lawmakers accused him of singling out Comcast and other matters captured his attention, they said. Martin said in March that the FCC would release a network management order by June 30, but no order has circulated among commissioners, said agency and industry officials.
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It’s unclear if Martin will ask the Enforcement Bureau to send him an order for a vote or whether he'll ask the bureau to rule on its own, they said. The inquiry began in January, with a Bureau letter to Comcast asking about allegations that it had slowed BitTorrent file transfers. Since then, Martin has discussed possible outcomes in detail with few outside his office, making the result difficult to handicap, commission officials said. The Wireline Bureau is thought to be helping the Enforcement Bureau, industry officials said.
Martin probably will decide Comcast violated at least one Internet principle and that title 1 of the Communications Act authorizes the FCC to enforce the guideline, said commission and industry officials. The Enforcement Bureau probably is waiting until it receives Comcast’s response to a June 12 filing by complainant Free Press to finish its draft, they said. Free Press said the FCC has that authority, and Comcast is expected to say the agency doesn’t. A company spokeswoman declined to comment.
The FCC is “still considering all pleadings and the best course of action,” said a spokeswoman, declining to discuss timing or other details. Martin consistently has said the commission has authority to enforce the Internet freedom principles under title 1, and that authority has been upheld by the Supreme Court, she said. Martin has pushed for consumer rights in which ISPs clearly describe any limits on use of the bandwidth they buy, she added. Martin has signaled that if ISPs slow content, they must show they do so for all applications providers. “While we pursue policies to spur competition among broadband platforms, we must also work to preserve the open character of the Internet,” Martin told a June 17 meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co- Operation and Development meeting in Seoul, South Korea. The FCC released the remarks Tuesday.
If Martin asks commissioners to vote, an FCC meeting likely to occur Sept. 25 is a probable occasion, industry and commission officials said. A vote outside a meeting is unlikely given the inquiry’s high profile, said telecom lawyers and others. The item likely will be voted on “because it’s such an important decision,” Free Press General Counsel Marvin Ammori said. “The FCC should be in its last stages because we've already had two rounds of comments, two public hearings, testimony from Internet experts. All the facts have been gathered, and hopefully the commission will get to a decision as quickly as they can.”
September seems to be the soonest the commission can act, a communications lawyer said. But the chairman hasn’t signaled when or even if he'll seek a vote, commission and industry officials said. Martin could issue a decision more quickly by bypassing fellow commissioners and having the Enforcement Bureau issue an item. But the item likely would wind up before commissioners because, if Comcast is found to have violated the Internet principles, the company almost certainly seek would review by the commissioners, they said.
One high-technology executive hopes the commission does nothing, because industry is working out ways Comcast and other ISPs can improve the efficiency with which they manage P2P transmissions without slowing them down. “More can be done by tapping the ISPs and the software developers” and having them work together “than by having government step in and try to do a rulemaking,” said CEO Martin Lafferty of the Distributed Computing Industry Association said. “The concerns that we have about premature or blunt force regulation is that it will tend to dampen the innovation that’s going on now.”
Verizon and Comcast are among “a lot” of ISPs taking part in trials of a Pando product designed to streamline P2P, said Lafferty. He declined to name the other participants, but said they include cable operators and telcos as well as foreign ISPs. “It’s a very good way to test any sort of circumstance” of “network architectures and conditions,” Lafferty said. Results of current tests under DCIA’s P4P Working Group will be publicized Aug 4. at the P2P Media Summit in San Jose, Calif., Lafferty said. Then or in September the group will test P2P products by Kontiki, Vuze and possibly others in addition to Pando’s, he added. Vuze had complained to the FCC about Comcast.