Win one for the gipper, FCC
In a surprising case of a governmental agency not caving to corporate suggestions, a small victory has been won for those who enjoy a free Internet.
As you may have read here on Neoseeker, Comcast has been throttling BitTorrent traffic for some time now, and have been less than forthcoming about their actions with the public. But this throttling will soon come to an end, thanks to a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission this week.
The FCC found that Comcast's limiting of P2P traffic was arbitrarily enforced, and went against the principles of Internet communication.
This ruling might of not have happened if it weren't for the actions of a guy named Marvin Ammori. He is the "general counsel" of the Free Press -- a non-profit organization that promotes a democratic free press by arguing against excessive consolidation of media organizations by corporations, and more recently, the tenets of network neutrality. Marvin Ammori was the person who filed the complaint against Comcast to the FCC, which resulted in their investigation in the matter -- so, all thanks to him, you Comcasters now have a lot 'ammori' bandwidth to play with (I'm sorry, could not resist.)
Here's what Mr. Ammori said about the FCC ruling, as quoted by the Torrent Freak news service: “Nine months ago, Comcast was exposed for blocking free choice on the Internet. At every turn, Comcast has denied blocking, lied to the public and tried to avoid being held accountable. We have presented an open and shut case that Comcast broke the law. The FCC now appears ready to take action on behalf of consumers. This is an historic test for whether the law will protect the open Internet. If the commission decisively rules against Comcast, it will be a remarkable victory for organized people over organized money."
A possible downside to this legal victory might be a sort of retribution from Comcast: given this ruling, they might now suggest that providing unlimited bandwidth to people is financially untenable. Perhaps they will take this ruling as license to raise prices, or lower bandwidth caps.
EDIT: Well, I just ran Speedtest. I did it about a month ago, and between the three times, I had download speeds between 2500-3000 kB/s, and upload speeds between 220-250 kB/s. All of those were great.
I ran three more now, and while the upload on all three was a bit higher, and the download on the last two was fine, the first one put me at 1600 kB/s. So, right now, my internet has me confused.
Mind you, 60GB/month is usually plenty for me, but twice in the last couple of months, I've exceeded it -_-
Yes, it was bittorrent >_>
I use Rogers, not Comcast though (Don't even think we can get Comcast, here in Canada)...
Hopefully, for those stuck with Comcast, they won't do anything...