Three of the five FCC commissioners allegedly voted to punish Comcast for throttling Internet traffic. They also reflect the opinion of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin who publicly criticized Comcast for the dubious practice. The punishment apparently consists of an order which demands that the ISP stops slowing down or blocking certain types of traffic, including peer-to-peer transfers.

Also, the FCC will make Comcast explain to consumers and the commission how it has blocked such traffic in the past, and publicly disclose how it plans to manage its network in the future. Aside from Chairman Kevin Martin, commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein have also supported punishing Comcast. The final decision will be taken at the August 1 meeting, Friday. The remaining two Republican commissioners have to vote with the rest for action to be taken against Comcast.

Republican Kevin Martin said in a Saturday statement that he thinks all consumers should have unfettered access to the Internet. The FCC's 2005 Internet Policy Statement states that: consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice; consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement; consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

It will be great for both users and the United States Internet infrastructure as a whole if FCC rules against Comcast's dubious practices. Our country is left behind in high-speed Internet lines and most European and Asian developed countries have significantly better connections that the very country where Internet was invented. It's time that ISPs start working continuously on improving the infrastructure and stop just charging money for technology which was put in place a decade ago.

A simple test by the AP last October has found that Comcast appeared to interfere with the BitTorrent traffic in ways which poses ethics questions and also probably costs the company a lot of money. Specifically, instead of throttling BitTorrent traffic, the company appears to create spoof peers which interfere with the normal peer-to-peer transfers and significantly slow down or even kill some downloads. Furthermore, their test has shown that Comcast appeared to "impersonate" existing peers to divert packets.

A subsequent test by the Max Planck Institute in Germany revealed that Comcast was blocking traffic not only during times of peak use, but at all times of the day and night.

Also, Comcast Corp. admitted to hiring people to fill seats at the Federal Communications Commission hearing in late April at Harvard Law School, thus limiting the public access to the event. It is a fairly common practice, although not exactly ethical, but Comcast said the move was made after the advocacy group Free Press urged people to attend in its behalf. The result was a room packed with sleepy people ever since the doors opened at 7 a.m., who’ve kept the seats warm until Comcast employees arrived at the scene.