FCC and Comcast At Odds Over Network Management

Posted 10/28/2009 at 1:18pm | by Bart Salisbury

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Hell hath no fury like a cable company scorned. Comcast has decided it doesn’t like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) meddling in its business, and has taken the FCC to court over a 2008 ruling, loudly proclaiming: “You’re not the boss of me!”

The issue is pretty simple. In 2008 Comcast secretly slowed down access to peer-to-peer data sharing sites, which it’s not supposed to do. Then, to compound it’s error, it lied to the press and consumers about what it was doing. The FCC stepped in and gave Comcast a stern talking to, and required Comcast to write on the chalkboard a hundred times: “I will not engage in discriminatory practices.” Minor punishment, really.

But it didn’t sit well with Comcast, which filed suit against the FCC in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Basically, Comcast is arguing that the FCC doesn’t have the legislative authority to regulate Comcast’s behavior, and therefore the FCC’s ruling is unenforceable and should be thrown out. What the FCC did, according to Comcast, was to enforce policy, not regulation or law. And policy doesn’t count.

The FCC counters it does have legislative authority, under the Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and Congress did grant it authority over cable companies. The FCC also pointed out that Comcast, when approved by the FCC to acquire another cable company, was specifically warned it would be held to terms of the policy in question: the FCC’s Internet Policy Principles. The FCC wrote in its court brief: “Comcast ignored that crystal clear warning. It cannot seriously claim to be surprised by the consequences.”

Image Credit: Comcast, sosunshine/flickr