Brace Yourself: Comcast Accused Of Unfair VoIP Practices

I'll save our darling Jesse James from another fit of conniptions by relating this latest tawdry tidbit concerning the assholes who run Comcast: the FCC has charged Comcast with the obligation to explain the disparity in its VoIP practices.

Those disparities: Comcast's own Digital Voice VoIP service runs smoothly and without bandwidth restriction, while third-party VoIP services continue to be subject to bandwidth throttling. Throttling which Comcast, of course, claims is "protocol agnostic."

FCC General Counsel Matthew Barry and Wireless Competition Bureau Chief Dana Shaffer sent Comcast a letter demanding an explanation:

We request that Comcast explain why it omitted from its filings with the Commission the distinct effects that Comcast's new network management technique has on Comcast's VoIP offering versus those of its competitors. We also ask that you provide a detailed justification for Comcast's disparate treatment of its own VoIP service compared to that offered by other VoIP providers on its network.

Supposedly put in place to dissuade hugely intense traffic like BitTorrent files, the "protocol agnostic" cap kicks into place and restricts a user's traffic for about 15 minutes, which might come in handy when you want to get your mother off the telephone, but sounds downright nasty as a general policy. Comcast: do you want to go to hell?

Comcast accused of unfair VoIP practices [Electronista]