Comcast Dials Up Vonage
Cable operator, voice-over-Internet-protocol provider to make sure Comcast's network-management techniques support Vonage service.
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/9/2008 6:56:00 AM
Comcast and Vonage Holdings agreed to work together to make sure that Comcast's network-management techniques "balance the need to avoid network congestion with the need to ensure that VoIP [voice-over-Internet-protocol] services like Vonage work well for consumers."
Comcast and Vonage compete for phone customers, so Comcast chief technology officer Tony Werner said in announcing the agreement that the collaboration demonstrates that the company is "committed to provide network-management solutions that benefit consumers and competition.”
Comcast was the subject of a Federal Communications Commission complaint about network-management techniques, and the Vonage announcement is just one of several initiatives it has undertaken, including with BitTorrent, which had been one of the companies complaining about Comcast.
It has also agreed to move to protocol-agnostic network management by the end of the year.
The complaint against the cable operator had been that it singled out the BitTorrent protocol in its attempts to prevent bandwidth-hungry uploads from clogging the system.
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