FCC Proposes Rules to Preserve an Open Internet
For many months, we have been working very hard with Chairman Genachowski's office, the Congress, and a broad array of stakeholders to try to find a fair and appropriate balance that would enable the FCC to codify a light regulatory approach that would protect the openness of the Internet but that would also protect the continued investment and innovation that has made the Internet the vibrant and dynamic place that it is today. As we have said previously, this was never about whether the Internet should be free and open as the ISP community (including Comcast) has long pledged to take no steps that would threaten the openness of the Internet -- the issue was how the FCC could accomplish this objective without also creating unintended and adverse consequences.
We believe Chairman Genachowski's proposal, as described this morning, strikes a workable balance between the needs of the marketplace and the certainty that carefully-crafted and limited rules can provide to ensure that Internet freedom and openness are preserved.
By taking an approach that is similar to that which was negotiated last fall by key legislators, Internet content and application companies, broadband ISPs, and other stakeholders, we believe there should be a strong consensus for the Chairman's approach. Most importantly, the approach the Chairman has outlined will remove the cloud that Title II regulation of broadband would place over continued innovation and investment in the Internet.
We applaud the Chairman and the Commission for conducting an open and inclusive process where everyone had the opportunity to be heard. This proposal also reflects the hard work of Members of Congress of both parties who met with stakeholders to forge a workable compromise on this complex issue.
We anticipate that the final Order considered by the Commission will incorporate the careful balancing that the Chairman described in his remarks today. While we obviously will need to see the actual language of the final Order, the careful and balanced approach laid out by the Chairman today has our support.
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Comments (6)
@Bo This is not really a push/pull argument. Level 3’s customer asks Level 3 to run a content delivery (CDN) service for content which Comcast users may choose to download or view. CDNs, ISPs and other network operators have historically paid for their portion of the network to provide services for their respective customers. The argument of “but your customer requested the content” does not represent the actual network costs of handling an end-to-end transaction nor does it reflect the way the products are designed to work. Residential broadband and CDN have very different cost models and as we said, the provider(s) of each service historically carries a portion of the cost burden, never arbitrarily placing the whole burden on “who requested the content,” often the consumer.
Level 3’s proposal to change a long standing and well-functioning Internet funding model based on “End users should pay 100%” because they “requested the content,” is concerning.
Your complaint of how much of Level 3's traffic it must carry before they get to send Level 3 a bill. You don't bring up the point that the originating packet that starts the data comes from YOUR NETWORK AND YOUR CUSTOMER!. Oh sorry I forgot you customer is the your shareholder I meant consumer of services. You are not carrying Level3 traffic but traffic from your consumer. Your consumer choose to watch a movie from netflicks. Netflicks nor Level3 did anything to start off the flow of data. Your consumer chose to use netflicks. You by your service agreement with your consumer of services agree to deliver this content.
Again this traffic is not level3 traffic but Comcast's users traffic now if you network won't handle the load of your users or if your users are costing you too much you need to raise the price at the consumer level and not on the peering level.
I am a Network Engineer I understand these things. It never is on a network level Level3 traffic or AT&T traffic. It is not a movie or an email it is all 1's and 0's and they are all the same. It is a matter of throughput. If you have a problem with your users using Netflicks too much then cut you users off. Don't blame Level3 their not doing anything but holding the data your users are requesting. In order for a Comcast customer to GET data from a source they must REQUEST it.
Just another reason for me to make your sales people cry when they call me to sell your services. The answer is always NO I don't deal will liars and thieves.
b0
I work at an ISP (and am also a comcast customer, because dsl service is poor at my house). Charging Level 3 to peer with you *is* double dipping if you're not providing transit for them. It's a *benefit* to comcast to peer with them because it takes traffic off any connections you have that are providing transit for you, and thus you are paying for the traffic over those connections. As a customer, I'm paying you for the bandwidth I'm using, and I expect to be able to connect to anyone, not just those who agree to be blackmailed into being customers of yours as well.
@Ryan This is a commercial peering dispute that does not impact our service to our customers. We’ve had a commercial agreement with Level 3 for a number of years that involves a certain amount of free peering, though nowhere close to the amount Level 3 is now demanding. Peering agreements are negotiated commercial arrangements between providers like Comcast and Level 3 that carry traffic across the networks that comprise the Internet. The same sort of agreement exists between Comcast and Level 3, between Level 3 and AT&T, and so on. This has to do only with the way that any two networks decide how to exchange traffic with each other.
Regulating what we can and can't do on the internet is far from net neutrality and far from an open internet when given corporations like yourself can jack up our costs every year, place a cap upon us that isn't even fair with the use of audio and video out here today, tell us how many devices we can use per service, fill the court rooms with your employees so the general public can't get in, etc.. Your claims that 1% violate the service by over using their upload download ratio, see they really are not enough there to damage it for the said 99% that you claim only use what was 5-10 gigs a month.. lol.. what is that 2 dvds worth of data. heck linux and windows updates alone can hit that. and that in itself is a lie when the majority of people use the internet for media, audio and video, and game play. If said 99% really want to pay your costs just to checking email, thats a joke right. Then you create a file backup system, will that 200 gigs of the cap per machine, of said 3.. oh thats right the would only use 5-10 of that extra 50 right?
then there is the push to watch videos on your site which are streamed from where? pinging addresses show its hulu content.. and then you want to attack netflix well there goes the net neutrality right out the door.. it is about us using your services and those you support, and even then you insist we should be charged more.. Its middle men like yourselves that need to be broken down. Between you and AT&T its hard to decide which is the bigger evil.
I posted my video response to your video on Peering here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HL_CXtvuas
Comcast, your upload speeds are 1/5th that of your download speeds. If you want a 1:1 ratio of data transfer between you and Level 3, perhaps you should give customers a 1:1 ratio of upload and download speeds.