Comcast is working on rehabilitating its name and implementing reasonable management techniques through a new partnership with VoIP service provider Vonage. The two companies made the announcement on Wednesday, saying they will work on ensuring the adequate management techniques to avoid network congestion and give customers quality VoIP services.

This is what we might call “an odd couple,” since the two partners are in fact competitors, but according to them, the partnership will help them create an equilibrium between what they need - better management practices, and what customers need – better services, applications and content of choice, as Louis Mamakos, Vonage Chief Technology Officer explained in a statement.

This is not the first unusual partnership Comcast closed this year. After controversial discussions and endless accusations, with good reason we might add, Comcast promised to behave and better handle peer-to-peer network traffic and revealed its newest best-friend, BitTorrent Inc.

The purpose of the two was to run BitTorrent’s technology more smoothly on Comcast’s broadband network and allow Comcast to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future – in other words, find a solution to heavy users affecting other users’ experiences.

Comcast is not the “bad guy” anymore is what the company has been trying to say, after months of accusations on network discrimination practices and claims of unethically interfering with the BitTorrent traffic.

Despite Comcast’s claims earlier this year that they had only interfered with peer-to-peer transfers in order to stop some users from harming other users’ experience by overwhelming the network, a Federal Communications Commission’s investigation revealed that in fact, Comcast used an equipment that affected a large part of the Internet subscribers, even when the network was not congested.

Now Comcast is working on changing its image, and is working on developing network management practices to ensure customers’ access to any content without having to deal with network congestion situations.

The partnership with Vonage is part of Comcast’s March commitment to move to a protocol-agnostic network management approach by the end of the year. Comcast has already begun testing traffic management practices, has announced collaboration with Pando Networks for a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” (BRR) and participation in the P4P Working Group organized by the Distributed Computing Industry Association.