The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is likely to vote against Cable giant Comcast Corp. on Friday. Comcast is accused of slowing down the Internet traffic for customers using certain file-sharing services such as BitTorrent and it will certainly be asked to submit any new network-management techniques to the FCC for approval and to provide more consumer exposure.

In a letter sent Thursday to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, declared the following: “Recent media reports indicate the FCC is poised for massive, unprecedented regulation of the Internet.”

“This dangerous path would limit freedom, stifle innovation and entrepreneurship, and kill American jobs,” explained Boehner.

It appears that the cable company delayed and blocked access to the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing program on purpose. The meeting on Friday is highly important as it promises to be a historical one: this would be the first time the commission has ruled on a Net neutrality violation.

Meredith Attwell Baker, acting head of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications & Information Administration, told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that the Bush administration itself is irritated. "We're concerned about the decision," Meredith Attwell Baker told the paper. "It appears to reverse a decade-old bipartisan policy against regulation of the Internet."

In 1987, the companies that carried Internet traffic were under an obligation to provide nondiscriminatory carriage of data traffic, a policy adopted by the FCC in 1968. The success of the Internet was not blocked by that decision. It continued to develop starting from nondiscriminatory access to the telecommunications network.

Net Neutrality is actually becoming a political focus point, with Democrats generally being in favor of Net Neutrality regulations, and Republicans generally being against it.