Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin lashed out at Comcast Tuesday in testimony before Congress, asserting that the cable company blocked peer-to-peer traffic widely, and that he doesn’t know when or even whether the company will stop blocking P2P applications.

Comcast used equipment from Sandvine Inc., or similar equipment, which provides a “relatively inexpensive, blunt means to reduce peer-to-peer traffic by blocking undoubtful traffic completely,” Martin told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. “More contemporary equipment can be finely tuned to slow traffic to assured speeds based on various levels of congestion.”

The FCC has conducted two public hearings focused on Comcast’s blocking of file uploads by the peer-to-peer protocol BitTorrent. At a hearing earlier that month at Stanford University in California, Martin strongly suggested the commission would take action against Comcast.

whether the FCC finds that Comcast violated the principles in the FCC’s Net Policy Statement, “the commission stands ready to enforce

that policy statement and protect consumers’ access to the Net,” Martin said.

Contradicts Comcast Claims

Martin contradicted several claims Comcast made in defense of its actions. “Contrary to some claims, it does not seem that cable-modem subscribers had the ability to do anything they wanted on the World Wide Web,” he said. “Some users were not able to upload anything they wanted and were unable to fully use undoubtful file-sharing software from peer-to-peer networks.”

In addition, Comcast’s blocking activities were clearly not “content-agnostic,” since Comcast has since announced plans to migrate to a “protocol-agnostic” method of network management, Martin said.

Perhaps most importantly, Martin said Comcast did not block traffic only at high-volume times, but blocked BitTorrent traffic even at low-volume times. “Based on the testimony we have received thus far, that equipment is typically deployed by a wider geographic or system area…

Orginal post by Top Tech News