Free Press Offers ‘Olive Branch’ to Cable

Network-Neutrality Proponents Sympathize with Cable Operators’ Network-Management Issues

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/17/2008 3:06:00 PM

Network-neutrality fan Free Press, which has complained to the Federal Communications Commission and elsewhere about Comcast's network management -- they say "blocking" -- of BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic, said Thursday that it wanted to "extend an olive branch" to the cable industry.

According to a copy of testimony prepared for the FCC's network-neutrality field hearing at Stanford University Thursday, Free Press policy director Ben Scott planned to tell the FCC commissioners that the group sympathized with cable's network-management issues over high-volume traffic.

"In my view," Scott said, "cable Internet-service providers have a legitimate issue with network congestion," which he ascribed in part to cable operators not having upgraded their networks for the "future of broadband," adding, "It will only get worse if we do not acknowledge and address it."

Comcast and BitTorrent, for their part, agreed to work together on the problem.

But Scott still used that branch to take a swipe at Comcast, saying that the company "first denied blocking, then acknowledged it [Comcast said it didn't acknowledge it], then directly challenged the legitimacy of the [FCC] policy statement and finally reversed itself and promised to stop in the future."

“Every broadband network that exists must use network management tools or it won’t work," said Comcast spokesperson Sena Fizmaurice in response to that characterization.  "Our current network management practices are reasonable and appropriately disclosed to our customers, and do not block any content, application or protocol.  The Internet’s success is built on governing itself.  Our recent announcements with Pando and BitTorrent, and our cooperation in other nongovernmental initiatives, shows again that the Internet can govern itself, and that government intervention is unnecessary. “

Scott said there are "many other legitimate ways for network providers to handle capacity problems together with consumers and innovators" that do not involve "application blocking."  While Comcast has long argued that it does not block traffic, but it also said it will institute a "protocol-agnostic" network-management scheme to address complaints that its network management targeted a particular P2P protocol -- BitTorrent's. It also teamed up with P2P company Pando Networks to test ways to better handle P2P traffic.

Scott said Free Press was not looking for an "end to all network management." Openness, he added, "does not mean that every bit should be treated exactly alike on the Internet. Openness does not stop us from protecting children or copyright or security on the Internet," all of which have been invoked by network-neutrality opponents as reasons not to codify the FCC's network-neutrality guidelines.

"Openness simply means that Internet policy should promote free speech and commerce in the online marketplace,” he added. “Openness means faithfully guarding against interference from the cable and telephone companies that have the power to become gatekeepers between consumers and producers of Internet content."

He also said how the FCC deals with the issue will guide communications policy for a generation.

The FCC hearing was prompted in part by the complaint by Free Press and others. The commission already held a field hearing on the subject at Harvard University.