In the wake of revelations that Comcast regularly shaped and blocked customer access to Internet services, the company announced today that it was partnering with Internet phone company Vonage to "address reasonable network management" and prevent Vonage customers from being knocked offline by Comcast.
"This agreement helps Vonage to ensure that customers have the best possible Internet experience," said Vonage chief technology officer Louis Mamakos.
"Although we're competitors with Comcast, this understanding helps our two companies work together to balance the needs of network management with consumers' ability to freely access the services, applications and content of their choice," Mamakos said.
"This collaboration with Vonage, and our outreach to many key participants in the Internet community, demonstrate that we are committed to provide network management solutions that benefit consumers and competition," said Comcast chief technology officer Tony Werner.
Comcast, like many other cable and telecom companies, had put a severe dent in Vonage's business through offering its own Internet phone services, usually as part of "triple play" packages that combine Internet access, cable television, and phone service. The struggling Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service has been looking for new financing to pay off its $253 million in debt and avoid bankruptcy.
But the announcement of the deal raised questions among critics of Comcast's practices as to why they would make such a deal with a competitor, particularly one like Vonage that did not rely on peer-to-peer file sharing services.
Marvin Ammori, general counsel for media watchdog group Free Press, said they were "baffled as to why it was necessary for Vonage to strike a network management agreement with Comcast to guarantee that their services are not degraded or blocked. Such anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices are already against the law."
"This announcement calls into question the company's honesty about its treatment of competing services. Was Comcast degrading Vonage's VoIP service before this announcement? And are they continuing to degrade other services that compete with their products?" Ammori said.
Playing nice
After the revelation that Comcast was blocking user access to the BitTorrent file sharing engine, the company was put in the sights of an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as well as a lawsuit by customer Jon Hart, who alleged that the blocking of services constituted deceptive marketing.
The judge in the lawsuit recently ruled that the suit should be put on hold, pending the outcome of the FCC's investigation.
In order to polish its image before the FCC, Comcast previously announced a deal with BitTorrent to improve its network management practices, and move to a "protocol agnostic" standard that would enable it to direct Internet traffic without blocking or slowing access for certain customers.
The usage of the phrase "reasonable network management" was a direct response to the FCC, which used similar phrasing in its declaration of principles for governing Internet traffic.
But Comcast was hit with more bad publicity after admitting that it had paid people off the street to fill seats at an FCC hearing on its network practices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The paid attendees evinced loud support for Comcast's representatives and blocked critics of the company from getting into the hearing.
Comcast's regular content blocking re-ignited debate over "net neutrality," the principle that all content on the Internet should be accessed equally, leading to several hearings and new legislation on Capitol Hill on how to ensure that the Internet would remain open to all users.
