Former FCC Boss On Comcast Traffic Shaping – If we had the network capacity & competition, this wouldn't be an issue…

In: broadbandreports.com|Site Feeds|VoIP

29 Feb 2008

Former FCC boss Reed Hundt talks to Telephony Online about the FCC’s 700Mhz auction, expanding the USF to cover broadband deployment, the controversy over baby bell wiretap immunity, and other industry topics. Hundt, who is pushing (so far unsuccessfully) for a national emergency broadband network at the behest of Frontline Wireless, takes a shot at the current FCC and complains about a lack of any comprehensive national broadband policy:

The FCC and the White House have collaborated in trying to convince the media and the people that everything is peachy whereas global travelers all know that Japan and England and France and Germany are way ahead of the U.S. in terms of broadband. That wass’t the way the 90s went. In the 90s, we led in the Internet and wireless and productivity gains and capital investment in communications. We don’t lead in the same way on any of these subjects anymore.

Hundt has complained that the line-sharing system he implemented in the 90′s worked well in France to bring about competition (and $40 IPTV & broadband bundles), but failed here due to shoddy implementation and enforcement (and because incumbents wanted it to). Hundt also has this to say about Comcast’s traffic shaping PR problem:

The problem with Comcast, the problem with the telephone companies is that they’re not delivering 100 Mb/s. The problem is not that they’re throttling P2P. Here’s what we ought to say: We want 100 Mb/s. We want it to be at the world’s lowest price. We want you to tell us what the obstacles are. We’ll help you deal with them. If we had 100 Mb/s, we’re not going to talk about throttling because there will be plenty of bandwidth.

100Mbps isn’t necessary for the average Joe, but he is right that adequate bandwidth keeps providers from needing to throttle P2P (see: FiOS). Of course were there adequate competition, capping and throttling issues (and probably net neutrality) would be taken care of by market forces organically. Comcast can get away with throttling upstream P2P traffic because many of their customers lack other options that would allow them to vote with their wallet.
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