p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Comcast, which recently announced it’ll be implementing a 250GB monthly cap in October, now says it’ll go to court to overturn a Federal Communications Commission ruling ordering it to stop throttling user bandwidth.

“The company issued a statement saying that it was taking the step because the FCC’s action was ‘legally inappropriate and its findings were not justified by the record’,” says vnunet.com, going on:

“The Comcast case was taken up after the internet service provider began throttling peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic.

“The ISP initially denied that it was doing so, but then admitted that it had to do so in order to guarantee network service.”

The FCC gave Comcast 30 days to halt its ‘bandwidth management‘ actions.

Now, “I’m certainly disappointed they ended up appealing,” the Washington Post has FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin saying.

“The commission has done a very thorough job on investigating the complaint. We thought we needed to step in and protect consumers’ access to the Internet.”

In July, “Comcast has been hit with three class actions accusing it of ’surreptitiously’ impersonating the computers of P2P users, and of using misleading advertising,” p2pnet reported, continuing »»»

Bell Canada is the largest ISP here with Comcast filling the same role in the US.Both companies were caught red-handed trying to screw their users by throttling bandwidth, and Bell customers who live in Ontario can join with their Quebec counterparts in a class action, p2pnet posted yesterday.

Now, Comcast, “deceived and misled consumers with regard to the company’s advertised promise to provide both ‘the fastest Internet connection’ and ‘unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications that the Internet has to offer’,”  according to Gilbert Randolph which, with SimmonsCooper, Hanly Conroy Bierstein Sheridan Fisher & Hayes, and Monzo Catanese, lodged the actions.

Our story went on the claims, filed concurrently in California, Illinois, and New Jersey, stated »»»

These representations are allegedly false because Comcast intentionally blocks or otherwise impedes its customers’ access to peer-to-peer file?sharing and other Internet applications.

According to the Complaints, Comcast surreptitiously impersonates the computers of users attempting to share files and sends “reset packets” that instruct the transmitting computers to stop sending data.  Thus, high-speed Internet users are denied access to the Internet despite paying for a service that Comcast promises is “unfettered.”  The lawsuits seek damages on behalf of all Comcast high-speed Internet users under the consumer protection statutes of California, Illinois and New Jersey.  A lawsuit with similar allegations was filed by Gilbert Randolph LLP in the District of Columbia in February.

Stay tuned.

(Cheers, Luvie)

250GB monthly cap - Comcast 250GB throttling: live on October 1, August 30, 2008
vnunet.com - Comcast to sue FCC over network neutrality, September 5, 2008
bandwidth management - Stop throttling traffic, Comcast ordered, August 1, 2008
p2pnet - Comcast ‘impersonated user PCs’: lawsuit, July 20 3, 2008

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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