FCC chair unfazed by Comcast wall of nonsense Score one for Kevin Martin, the chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission. Clearly, he realizes that Comcast deserves a slap. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported , Martin said he was "troubled" that the big-name American ISP "initially denied it was slowing or blocking its broadband Internet customers' …
A government official telling us to trust a government and not worry?
Ok, now I'm worried.
Oh, wait, it's the USA. Does anyone care what they do with their spectrum, other than perhaps being the source of lobbyists for their companies to be able to do the same to other countries. Countries who generally have a better understanding of consumer value?
Who the hell decided it would be a good idea to allow cable companies to have a monopoly in a geographical region in the US anyway? Comcast can deceive the public and talk out both sides of its face because it does not face real competition (in the states in many places all the other alternatives such as DSL are usually way slower and or more expensive). Having lived in Europe I can say the last thing we need to is state sanctioned infrastructure monopolies.
Well, maybe threeway, with all the video by internet being provided.
It's pretty obvious that it's stupid to expect 24/7 full speed, but that's what the ISPs look to be selling. They hide all the little restructions, whether it's contention ratios or download caps, in the small print.
We're maybe getting a bit of a different picture here in the UK, but our ISPs are advertising capacity they can't deliver. They get customers who fall for their lies, and then get all hot and bothered when you believe them.
And then, when they have a procedure for dealing with excessive usage, onstead they use the same sort of hidden traffic interference that Comcast are doing.
And in some ways the FCC makes Ofcom look bad. Must be an election year.
Obviously you have not been a Comcast customer. It took them 3 weeks to just to get my connection to *work* once. And during this process they told me that they couldn't give me any details of the problem for "security reasons". Eventually I finally saw a truck across the street put up a new cable and suddenly things worked.... after three weeks. When a company can't even tell you why you unable to work today, or give you a description of the problem, or even the common courtousy of when it will be fixed, I am hardly suprised they can't tell you about their traffic throtteling practices.
"A hallmark of what should be seen as a reasonable business practice is certainly whether or not the people engaging in that practice are willing to describe it publicly,"
I believe this declaration should go down in history as a textbook example of The Right Thing.
Especially now and especially in the USA, it is good to see that public officials can state things simply and clearly.
Now, of course, it remains to be seen whether or not this beautiful gem is going to actually be followed by proper action.
But hey, it's a politician that has SAID the right thing. It's a start !
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
