Oh, No — It’s Comcastic

Can a vendor with a monopoly on providing one type of service to you cripple it if you refuse to buy other services from them as well? That’s what many readers suspect Comcast of doing, and not just because of the recent revelations about its throttling of P2P traffic. Quietly charging more for less whenever possible is what many of its customers think Comcast is all about.

Comcast’s use of phony TCP reset packets against some broadband customers has spurred several lawsuits and even today’s FCC hearing, as well as hopefully refocusing public attention on the whole net neutrality issue. In its defense, Comcast claims that its steps to arbitrarily slowing BitTorrent or other traffic are “reasonable network management practices” that Internet providers have the right to do. But while there are some very interesting arguments to be made on both sides of the net neutrality debate, it should be pointed out that Comcast’s behavior is part of a pattern Gripe Line readers have seen before.

“To me, the BitTorrent throttling is just another manifestation of the same junk I went through with Comcast,” writes one of the readers who last year had his Internet service cut off after supposedly violating a usage limit that Comcast refuses to specify. “In both cases, somebody at Comcast targets you for reasons they will not make clear. How much do you want to bet that the real limit is you’ve got to have a monthly bill of a hundred bucks or so? Just order lots of premium movie channels, and you can probably download anything you want without Comcast saying boo.”

Comcast has said that only extremely heavy usage will violate its usage limit, but its refusal to say where that line is certainly leaves the impression that other criteria than sheer traffic may be involved. Another point of suspicion is the fact that the company rewrote its sneakwrap terms to incorporate that “reasonable network management practices” standard after the P2P throttling story broke. “How convenient,” noted one reader sarcastically. “The fact that Comcast was doing this before its ToS (Terms of Service) said it could is no problem, right? Like everybody else, Comcast can rewrite the ToS anytime it wants, because it says it can in the ToS.”

Of course, it’s not just Comcast broadband customers who find themselves being squeezed. “I have had Comcast’s cable TV ‘silver tier’ for about ten years now,” one reader. “This gives me lots of channels, and costs less than if I were a new customer signing up for the various packages that would give me these same channels. I am ‘grandfathered’ in at the current contract level and price. Although they haven’t said so, they are apparently interested in having me switch to one of their current packages. Tactic #1: any new channels they add, I don’t get. You name it, it’s not part of my package. Tactic #2: every few months, I lose a channel that I used to be able to get. If it gets renamed, or moved to a different channel number, I no longer get it. I have called to complain. Ha, ha, ha! They are very nice, and the customer service people are here in the US. Denver I think. But they are very unable to help me. Boo hoo, they say, just sign up with one of their current packages, and pay more.”

Indeed Comcast’s fondness for nickel and diming its cable TV customers was clearly one of the big reasons it finished so strongly in the Worst Vendor poll. “I realized I was paying a monthly fee for channels I never wanted,” wrote another reader. “When I called Comcast to change it I was told that there is a standard $1.99 fee to make any changes to my account. Excuse me? I wonder if this would also apply if I anted up for the triple play, HD box and DVR. What customer-oriented company charges a fee to change monthly service?”

And what kind of company thinks that “reasonable network management practices” include faking reset commands? I suppose we can hope that the FCC will find out exactly what Comcast is up to, although I’m not going to holding my breath. We don’t know for sure how reasonable Comcast’s practices really are, but we do know it will continue to try to keep them secret.

Do we need a net neutrality law? Tell us what you think by posting your comments below or by writing Ed Foster at Foster@gripe2ed.com.