Comcast will not get away that easily for interfering with Internet traffic, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin plans to recommend that Comcast be punished for violating users’ right to open access to Internet, the Associated Press reported Thursday night.

In April this year, a FCC investigation revealed that Comcast wasn’t exactly honest when they said they had only interfered to peer-to-peer transfers in order to make sure that users overwhelming the network don’t ruin other users’ experience.

Despite Comcast’s denial of unfair Internet practices, the investigation revealed that in fact, the company interfered with P2P traffic even when the network was not congested, thus blocking the access of a large number of subscribers.

“The commission had adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told AP. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

Comcast is accused of using an equipment normally able to cover a wide geographical area or system, but unable to know when an individual segment of the network is congested. Therefore, it blocks users regardless of congestion levels, Chairman Kevin Martin explained at the time.

The worst thing is that consumers are unaware of these potential limitations when they purchase an Internet service, although it seems to be a common practice among ISPs. This entire aggravation led in the end to one big question: Do Internet service providers have the right to use such discriminatory practices?

Comcast doesn’t seem to be concerned with that however, and considers that its “carefully limited measures” of managing network traffic are “reasonable,” and do not qualify as Internet blocking, as company spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice explained.

Comcast and FCC may see this from different perspectives, but that won’t stop Chairman Martin from recommending enforcement action against Comcast. The proposal will be submitted to a vote at the August 1 open meeting.

The situation will not be easily solved, as FCC demands details on Comcast’s practices and Comcast says its policy statement is not enforceable and that the terms “reasonable network management” haven’t been made clear.

The debate over the network operators’ right to prioritize traffic has been going on for some time now, and in 2008, the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act” appeared, which stands against “unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degradation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet.”