This is typical of the way Comcast operates.
From time to time The Sun and other papers have run articles about Comcast warning some local customer that he's exceeding his bandwidth limit. But when the customer asks what that limit is, Comcast won't say. It just cuts off his service.
Why? Because if we all know what the limit is, we'll all use as much as we're allowed and the network will get all clogged up. This is patently ridiculous; if this kind of conduct were universally true, there wouldn't be a buffet restaurant left in business.
The BitTorrent case goes a step further because Comcast applied its slowdown to an entire class of net traffic. Now you may not have a lot of sympathy for a bunch of video pirates, but some of these folks are actually using the service legitimately.
And consider this - if you're a Comcast customer, you may get its video-on-demand service. But it's quite possible - and a handful of sites are already doing it - to deliver video over the Net. What if Comcast decides to slow down the video service you want to buy in order to keep the bandwidth for its own video service? Remember, everything travels over the same pipes to your house.
Right now, we all pay the same amount for the same classes of Comcast service under the theory that the service provider should be "neutral" about what passes over the network, assuming that it's not illegal.
To purists, the Internet is just a highway system whose builders shouldn't care whether a tractor-trailer hauling food belongs to Safeway or Giant or Wegmans - or whether the truck is full of corn flakes or bananas. We're all subject to the same speed limit.
Not so fast, says Comcast. The company says it has the right to take actions that amount to "reasonable network management" to keep up network speed for the rest of its users. That's all it was doing by slowing down BitTorrent traffic - making sure other customers had enough bandwidth.
From the tenor of the questioning Monday, it didn't sound as if FCC members were persuaded. But the issue is likely to drag on as Comcast Corp., AT&T Inc. and other providers decide they have the absolute right to slow down some users and speed up others - for whatever reason.
Want an even more chilling example of what happens when a network stops being neutral? In September, Verizon Wireless refused to let NARAL, the national abortion rights group, send text messages to members who subscribed to NARAL's news alert service.
