Comcast Quietly Changes ToS
Comcast has silently changed it’s terms of service to clarify the cable giants policies on traffic management.
This move comes on the heels of months of debate and third-party proof that Comcast was throttling back bandwidth on some subscribers using BitTorrent.
Now according to Section III of the new terms “uses reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards.” Comcast says that it’s not alone in this practice stating that “all major ISPs” use some sort of “traffic shaping”. A spokesman went on to say that if an ISP doesn’t use this type of throttling it leaves the customers open to “spam, viruses, security attacks, and other dangerous risks” that can hinder the company bringing “the best possible service to it’s customers”.
Customers were not happy with Comcast. A class-action lawsuit was filed against by one subscriber, a website complained to the FCC and an investigation ensued. Once the FCC opened the investigation to comments they were flooded to messages from angry users. “If you so much as open a BitTorrent client on a computer on the Comcast network, your entire connection drops to almost a crawl,” said one comment. Another subsciber said, “I have experienced this throttling of bandwidth in sharing open-source software, e.g. Knoppix and Open Office. Also I see considerable differences in speed ftp sessions vs. html. They are obviously limiting speed in ftp as well.”
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Comcast Quietly Changes ToS
Comcast has silently changed it’s terms of service to clarify the cable giants policies on traffic management.
This move comes on the heels of months of debate and third-party proof that Comcast was throttling back bandwidth on some subscribers using BitTorrent.
Now according to Section III of the new terms “uses reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards.” Comcast says that it’s not alone in this practice stating that “all major ISPs” use some sort of “traffic shaping”. A spokesman went on to say that if an ISP doesn’t use this type of throttling it leaves the customers open to “spam, viruses, security attacks, and other dangerous risks” that can hinder the company bringing “the best possible service to it’s customers”.
Customers were not happy with Comcast. A class-action lawsuit was filed against by one subscriber, a website complained to the FCC and an investigation ensued. Once the FCC opened the investigation to comments they were flooded to messages from angry users. “If you so much as open a BitTorrent client on a computer on the Comcast network, your entire connection drops to almost a crawl,” said one comment. Another subsciber said, “I have experienced this throttling of bandwidth in sharing open-source software, e.g. Knoppix and Open Office. Also I see considerable differences in speed ftp sessions vs. html. They are obviously limiting speed in ftp as well.”
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