FCC chairman wants Comcast punished

Comcast's idea of network management amounts to unauthorized network manipulation, says the head of the Federal Communications Commission, who will recommend that the service provider be punished for throttling peer-to-peer traffic.

"The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet," the commission chairman, Kevin J. Martin, told The Associated Press late Thursday. "We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles."

New York Times writer Vindu Goel notes that this apparent victory for 'Net neutrality advocates could come at a price: "Mr. Martin's proposed ruling in favor of openness could actually end up hurting Internet users if it accelerates the nascent moves by the industry to charge customers based on how much data they use instead of offering essentially unlimited data for a flat fee."

(Update: Now it seems as though by punishment Martin meant a stern talking to or perhaps a timeout; definitely not a fine or anything of that nature.)

• LANs / WANs
• carriers
• Comcast