Telecosm - Ike Elliott

Comcast & BitTorrent Sitting in a Tree...

...you know the rest of the rhyme.  Golly, you take a week off on vacation, and you come back and the wind has been taken out of the sails of the 'net neutrality push.  Who'd-a thunk it.  Reminds me of that Peaches and Herb song from growing up:

Reunited and it feels so good
Reunited 'cause we understood
There's one perfect fit
And, Comcast, BitTorrent's it
We both are so excited
'Cause we're reunited, hey, hey

...okay, so maybe that's just a little over the top.  Must be the vacation still messing with me.

Of course, I'm talking about last week's news that BitTorrent and Comcast are working together to change the way Comcast does "traffic shaping" on its network, so that certain apps like BitTorrent aren't singled out anymore.  Instead, bandwidth hogs will be singled out.  Of course, it will take Comcast most of this year to do some experimenting and change its traffic-shaping policies, but there it is.  BitTorrent is no longer the mortal enemy of Comcast.

Hance Haney, over on the Technology Liberation Front, says the 'net neutrality fight is over, and I tend to agree with him, at least until another major violation is discovered.  However, FCC Chair Kevin Martin continues to fire warning shots at Comcast.  Martin wants to take credit for progress at Comcast, and it does appear that the threat of regulation had some positive effect, so Martin won't relent 'til Comcast follows through on their public statements.

Of course, 'net neutrality proponents are still begging the FCC to regulate, as with this post from Jef Pearlman at Public Knowledge:

Much like Verizon’s announcement that they would open their wireless network to anyone’s devices, this news has the potential to do a lot of good, but the devil will be in the details.

...and later in the post

We know that service providers are discriminating against certain technologies. ISPs have denied everything, they have failed to release the details of their activities, they argue that there’s no problem with their behavior, and they claim that the FCC has no authority to stop them. None of these is acceptable.

There's more than a little truth in that.  Still with Comcast recanting and working with BitTorrent, it will be hard to make as much political progress with the FCC petitions or in Congress, with the Markey bill. 

Meanwhile, I'm glad that Comcast is on a better path, and that it got there before anybody had to get heavy-handed with regulation.  I hope we can continue to self-regulate in the Internet space, even if threatening regulation is what it takes to keep it unregulated.

700 MHz Auction is Over

At long last, The FCC ended the 700 MHz auction yesterday, after 38 days and 261 rounds, and after raising $19.592B.  It took 38 days to get here, but will take up to ten more days for the FCC to make its announcement about the spectrum winners. 

The auction exceeded the FCC's expectations in terms of dollars raised, but the D-block did not reach the minimum bid and in the end had to be "de-linked" from the auction in order to close the bidding out.  The FCC needs to consider whether to re-auction the D-block under different rules.

Harold Feld has a good summary of the auction over on WetMachine, calling the auction a success despite the D-block failure.

Of course, my main interest is in learning if Google won C-block!

FCC Extends Deadline for Qwest Forbearance Petition

The FCC was due to make a decision this month on a Qwest forbearance petition that would have granted "dominant carrier" tariff relief and would have lifted some price caps on local loops in four markets: Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, and Minneapolis.  The FCC extended the deadline to July 26th, according to a Phone+ report.

The FCC denied a similar request from Verizon last fall, and should deny this Qwest request as well. I'm not sure why the FCC needs another 90 days to say "no."

FCC Chair Kevin Martin Under Fire

Ars Technica reports that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is the subject of a congressional investigation over his alleged manipulation of study data to support his policy viewpoints.  Representatives Dingell and Barton sent a letter to Martin requesting tons of records, and they seem to be focusing on:

• Martin's support of a la carte video programming and how Martin ignored the findings of a 2004 study that questioned the benefits of a la carte video programming.
• Martin's contention that the cable industry had reached the 70% market penetration number despite evidence to the contrary, and therefore should now be regulated.
• The FCC's recent controversial position on media ownership rules.

Some chickens might be coming home to roost for Chairman Martin.

Kevin Martin Turns Up Heat on Comcast

There's an article on page B5 of this morning's Wall Street Journal, "FCC's Martin Faults Comcast", describing a speech that FCC Chair Kevin Martin gave at Stanford on Friday.  In the speech, Martin talked about the FCC's 'Net neutrality probe into Comcast's traffic shaping practices, and said:

"A hallmark of what should be seen as a reasonable business practice is certainly whether or not the people engaging in that practice are willing to describe it publicly."

It sounds to me like Martin would like the FCC to at least enforce one of the four freedoms...that buyers of Internet service have a right to know what they are buying, so Internet service providers should disclose their network management and traffic shaping/blocking policies.  That is the one freedom that is the least controversial, so I think that would be a good first step.