This is Kevin Martin's parting shot against the cable companies. He's had it in for them since day 1 (reason's never been clear).

Does Comcast prioritize their own phone service? Sure. Their phone service is sold as a telco equivalent. If you choose to use Vonage, it's best efforts, and goes into the mix with your neighbor's bittorrent traffic and the guy up the street watching porn. Yeah, they use the same pipe, but they're two entirely different services.

Sadly, this is hardly even news... but it needs to be stopped.
The FCC should also stop Verizon from using their FIOS rollout to remove customers' POTS copper premise wiring, which permanently prevents them from getting phone service through a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier).

Not to say that Comcast isn't doing something sketchy, but Martin has zero credibility on this - it's sort of like if Rush Limbaugh claimed that Hillary Clinton was feeding on the livers of infants - it doesn't mean for certain it's NOT true, but the source means the claim has no credibility.

That poll is kind of silly. I don't (and will NEVER) use Comcast so naturally I had to answer "no"

I had Mediacom phone service for a short few months and the service was horrible. Choppy and sometimes wouldn't ring...Just lots of crap that you might have expected from cell phones 20 years ago.

Ironic how Comcast :now a defacto monopoly in many areas is complaining or pulling alot of the same crap the RBOCs pulled when the cable companies and smallar phone companies wanted in on phone service .

You know the competition war is heating up:finally when you see stories like this .

Straying a little here but you know these companies are afraid of competition when they want to remove all of their competitor's old wiring when installing something different like Fios .I heard if you switch to Verizon's Fios from cable they now want to remove you cable wiring ? .

This is the heart of net neutrality.

Comcast, Time-Warner, etc. should supply me the pipe, but what I do with it is my business. They can limit the number of MB I use, but they don't get to allow me to exceed my limit 'cause I use them and charge me for using someone else.

Among the other good things an Obama Admin brings, a new FCC is one of 'em.

I had enough problems with my comcast phone service that I never bothered to use a competitors!

@dragonfire81: Then don't vote.

@dragonfire81: Your vote of 'No' says that you have Comcast but haven't experienced any problems using a rival VOIP.

In my area, you either have comcast or..nothing.

Dsl is only sparsely available, no fiber, no competing cable companies, and nothing in the works. This is a small city with a population of around 75,000.

There's two sides to this:

1) Comcast is intentionally degrading VOIP compared to all other internet traffic

or

2) Comcast is prioritizing it's VOIP compared to all other internet traffic.

In case 1, Comcast is making say, Vonage's service worse compared to Ol' Joe's porn stream. In case two, everything, from Ol' Joe, to Granny's recipe page, to your email, is less important. Case 1 is clearly wrong, case 2 should not be.

But, being comcast, they are probably dealing with case 1.

It is interesting how the article text talks about preferential/priority treatment for comcast VOIP traffic while the consumerist summary uses the words "deliberately degrading".

Consumerist says ""deliberately degrading" while the article mentions that degrated service *might* be a side effect of prioritizing comcast traffic.

I'm not a comcast apologist or an enemy of net neutrality but the post author is certainly not going for neutral reporting here.

@JustThatGuy3:

Agreed. Take it from somebody who works in this industry, this isn't really a matter of Comcast "messing" with other Phone Services. There are technical reasons that make it harder to have equal treatment for non-Comcast third-party voice applications.

Option 1: Slow down Comcast VoIP to be the same best-effort signal as everyone's data. This is the worst kind of "fair" as the service will suffer and doesn't "fix" the problem.

Option 2: Speed-up the other VoIP services. However, the comcast modem doesn't have an easy way to verify that the traffic is VoIP traffic instead of just your data, unless they actually inspect every packet, which will REALLY slow down all traffic through the modem.

Option 2a: Designate a physical port on the modem for high-priority VoIP traffic that gets the same treatment as the Comcast VoIP. Except, experience shows that some customers will abuse this and connect data services instead, and now we're back to square 1.

Option 2b: Implement and Allow the protocols that allow the non-Comcast VoIP device to designate itself as in-need of certain QoS settings to make VoIP work with the same quality as Comcast. This can be done, but it depends on the third-party box doing the right thing, which Comcast can't guarantee, leading to the inevitable three-way blame-game between Comcast, 3rd party, and customer.

This is a tech support nightmare and can't really be fixed unless Comcast is going to "certify" that certain 3rd party boxes will work with their modem, which they really don't have any incentive to do, since it would cost them significant dollars to do so.

In summary, there really is a technical advantage to having your VoIP service managed directly by your ISP. Equipment and software can be designed and tested in a cohesive ecosystem, and this results in superior performance. If you want inexpensive service, you have to live with the performance hit. If you want an optimum implementation, you'll have to pay for it. Or, you can wait until the standards become more "standard", and everything becomes as plug-and-play as a USB printer.

@oldgraygeek

It not only prevents them from getting phone service through a CLEC, but copper and commodities in general are expensive.

Hence the new copper parachute for executives.

@JustThatGuy3: The issue is that comcast is skirting regulations by claiming their digital voice is not the same thing as a phone service, but that it is more like VoIP. So either they are running a dedicated phone service and should follow the same regulations as telcos, or they can continue to claim they are VoIP. But if they claim they are VoIP, then they are guilty of degrading competing services but not their own.

Basically the FCC is just sticking Comcast's own weaselly definition of their service right back in their face. Most likely comcast will implement VoIP QoS rules to create a "separate but equal" treatment of internet VoIP. It of course will still be legally challenged and Comcast will probably end up under telco regulations.

wait! comcast manipulating the flow of traffic thru their nodes to prioritize their services over competing products? no way! no how! wouldn't believe it for a second!

dammit. someone needs to reset the "______ days since comcast was a jackass" sign.

Congestion Management:

1. Apply Mucinex
2. Enjoy relief!

[www.theregister.co.uk]

Great story about this on The Register

@silver-bolt: Comcast's digital voice uses it's own dedicated channel on the cable modem. It basically runs on a second dedicated logical network connection. So it is not mixed with internet traffic, nor is it effected by internet traffic.

Normal VoIP is shared with internet traffic on the internet connection. So when they throttle internet traffic during peak usage or when you hit their 250gb cap, your VoIP gets throttled with it. A user would then have to stop all other internet activities so the VoIP could have enough bandwidth to work.

Basically Comcast set their phone service up like a telco's service, but calls it VoIP to avoid regulations. The FCC is now leveraging Comcast's own definition to bring this case. Comcast will have to admit their phone service should fall under telco regulations or do something to provide the same guaranteed bandwidth to all VoIP carriers. Such as allow a way for all VoIP traffic to use that second guaranteed network path.

@JGKojak: Yes, but I wish somehow we could isolate the Kevin Martin gene for putting the screws to the cable companies, and then splice it into the new chairperson.

Kevin Martin was good for at least one thing: he never put up with Big Cable shenanigans.

@Corporate_guy: Bingo.

@MikeHerbst: This is an excellent comment that gets to the heart of the issue, and also teaches me a whole lot of stuff I didn't know. Thanks.

I call BS for my place at least.
I have comcast Digital voice. And I use Voipstunt to call back to the folks in UK and Portugal. I've never had a problem with either line. And thats with the voipstunt servers being in the Eu somewhere.
And this is even with quite heavy surfing as the connection is shared.

@Corporate_guy: This is true *IF* they are simply treating other VoIP traffic agnostically along with all other traffic.

I've configured my router to give priority to the port my VoIP adapter is using, so as long as there's not too much lag or jitter between my house and my VoIP provider (1800 miles away) the phone should always work fine. If my cable provider (not Comcast) interfered specifically with VoIP traffic while providing their phone service with its own channel, it could be construed as acting improperly. If they just leave all of the IP traffic alone then it's fair.

Clearwire, a wireless broadband company I used to work for, had a VoIP product. It was something of a company secret that they degraded the service of competitive VoIP services. I'm sure they still do it.

@oldgraygeek: Not really. The CLEC will have to provide new facilities and have the ILEC reinstall a copper drop to your residence. A pain in the ass, but your still not "stuck" with FiOS

This is kind of OT, but when I lived in Madison, WI I had a friend who worked as an installer for AT&T. He told me that when people switched to Charter phone service (the only cable company in Madison), Charter would intentionally cut the phone wires really short when they installed the phone service, that way when people switched back to AT&T, they would have to rewire their entire phone box.

I would think that using Comcast's VOIP services through Comcast ISP would undoubtedly be better quality, all else being equal. There'd be less routing, or less overhead, or something. It sounds more like conspiracy theory to me, but all this VOIP stuff seems like bunk to me anyway (anyone here remember the good old days of free internet phone service?).

That's not to say they shouldn't investigate. They shouldn't even need suspicion to investigate net neutrality issues. There needs to be an undercover FCC squad roaming Comcast offices at all times.

@dragonfire81: I just clicked view results since I don't have a service. You seem kind of silly for not using common sense that you didn't need to answer it.

@Rectilinear Propagation: Not really. A vote of "No" says "I have not had problems using rival VOIP services with Comcast." I don't have Comcast, so I haven't had problems using rival VOIP services with them. I chose not to vote since I think the question was clearly intended for Comcast customers only, but that's not exactly how it's written.

I have a VoIP Polycom phone I use from work when I work from home. I've had no problems with it. I set the QOS on my router so that more bandwidth is provided for my work phone when I am working. My dad uses that T-Mobile VoIP service on his Comcast connection and it also works fine.

I usually have at least 3 computers running on it plus network activity when I use my work VoIP phone (file server, laptop, desktop).

Wired has an excellent article on Comcast and how they are a company of deceit and not caring.

[www.wired.com]

We used to have Comcast Voice (to go along with cable and internet). After about a year, we switched to Vonage. I don't remember why, but I was talking to a Comcast CSR a while after the switch, and the subject of phone service came up, and I mentioned that we use Vonage. "Oh, you use VONAGE?" they said, like it was a big deal.

We thereafter had so many problems with the phone quality; it made me extremely suspicious.

@JustThatGuy3:
"Does Comcast prioritize their own phone service? Sure. Their phone service is sold as a telco equivalent."

That's completely untrue from everything I've read. Comcast wants to have it both ways. They want you, the customer, to think of it as a telco equivalent, but when it comes to being regulated, they want it classified as an "information service", which means it isn't subject to the fees and regulations of traditional phone service. There's nothing that irritates me more than somebody wanting to have it both ways, always to their advantage.

@u1itn0w2day:
No, but there have been reports of verizon removing copper, because they don't have to provide CLECs with access to the fiber.

Comcast encapsulates your traffic in larger packets to go across their network. These packets have their own QoS and Comcast sets yours to a low QoS priority. Which means all of your traffic is the first to get dropped if there is congestion. Anything any of your neighbors do will have priority over your traffic. If there is heavy usage of the network when you get hit with this low priority, your VoIP will most likely become unusable and web surfing will be very crappy. Your own QoS settings will most likely do very little to help. Your own QoS just lets your router know which traffic to send quickly and which traffic can be slightly delayed. It does nothing past your own router.

@NinjaPoo: Comcast's throttle rules are new. And they aren't consistently applied. They are applied based on the congestion of your node. So if you have a lot of neighbors that heavily use their connections, you will get hit with this throttling much easier. If you are the only guy on your node, you will most likely never see it happen to you.

I've not only had problems using a rival VoIP service, but I've run into trouble with streaming video services too. I know that various factors can affect your connection, but why does my internet always seem to grind to a halt when I'm on the phone or watching a video, but when I initiate a direct download that tops of and stays at around 900Kbps, why does it continue to run like a champ? No really, would someone explain it, because I have no idea about the magic behind internet services for the most part. And being burned by Comcast's redefinition of the word "unlimited monthly bandwidth" recently, I'm not willing to put it past 'em to fudge rival services in order to make theirs seem like less than crap by comparison. But it may be my ignorance, so...

@MikeHerbst: Nicely said.

@JustThatGuy3:

Well, that's all well and good. But I have a small child. And I'm telling you, my ongoing worry with Comcast is what if something happens to my little boy and I can't get through to 911 because of Comcast's "preferential treatment?" Which is why Comcast won't be my provider any more. There's a diff betwee preferential treatment and literally not providing enough bandwidth for one to conduct a call and be understood by the parties on the other side. That's beyond degraded. That's blocking communication for the sake of the almighty dollar. And why on earth would I switch to Comcast's phone service (their suggestion) when I'm already paying them for cable TV and internet, and they treat me so poorly?

@MikeHerbst:
@JustThatGuy3:

I agree with both of you guys. Vonage and the rest are going to be "best-effort" service. Of course comcasts is going to do better because they provision for it. VoIP has always been a "best effort" service.

my plain old telephone service (POTS) still works when I need it and sounds pretty clear. With Uni-tel as my LD provider I get off about around $40 total a month (with taxes and even fees) for POTS and I do a fair share of LD calling. The good thing about mine is my $40 will go lower if I don't use near as much LD at $0.03/min. So as my bill can get lower if I don't use it the VoIP people still are paying $25-40 for "best effort" service.

recently I needed a line downstairs. Ironically I went to MagicJack for downstairs. All I really needed was an office line. Didn't need anything else except an occasional office line. At $50 for the first year and $20 each additional it was a bargain.

I can say with both services I have I am pretty much satisfied. If I need to call canada that bad I can fire up magicjack for that.

Surprised? I figured as much when the talked about their bandwidth monitoring. Get busted down for two much bandwidth and find out you can't make a VOIP call either. Unless you have their VOIP.

The third possible choice on the survey would have been "I don't use VOIP".

@Corporate_guy: Unless you're a large-corporation IT guy, I probably know more about tcpip networking and cable internet providers' networks than you do. I'm well aware that the QoS I set on my router affects only how my router allocates my available bandwidth to demands within my home network. If you read carefully, I specified that it only helps "as long as there's not too much lag" between me and my VoIP provider. "Anything any of my neighbors do" will have exactly the SAME priority as my traffic, they aren't corporate customers with some sort of QoS agreement with our cable company. My point, with respect to my QoS settings on my own router, is that as long as I have more than 64kbps available and there's not some lag issue on the route to my VoIP provider, my phone will work but I might get poor performance for other network uses.

The real point was in my first line. If Comcast is intentionally delaying competitors' VoIP traffic to and Comcast customers, they are acting in bad faith and they are running a risk that regulators may tire of giving Comcast a free pass on whether their phone service is a telecom or internet service.

I don't see how Martin's political affiliation is noteworthy.

It only makes sense that you would have trouble with external voip services. Because they are external. I'm not a huge Comcast fan, just had a botched cable card install this past weekend. But Comcast has control of the entire network where your voip terminates. So basically your voip traffic never leaves Comcast's LAN. Vonage and all the other 3rd party providers have to traverse the internet. Of course there will be additional problems.

@MikeHerbst: Implementing QoS isn't as difficult as you are making it out to be. For example, my router running DD-WRT has QoS, and it works by inspecting packets rather than requiring packets to identify themselves as VoIP.

I use QoS on my router extensively. VoIP and HTTP are given higher priorities. BitTorrent, Flash, and HTTP video are given lower priorities. If my 125 mHz router from early 2003 can do it with some free firmware and 10 clicks worth of setup, I'm skeptical of the claim that having a Comcast modem do this would "REALLY slow down all traffic".

There's another side to this. Comcast says that they will not throttle or limit their own Digital Voice service, but will do it to other services:
[help.comcast.net]

Let me quote:
"Comcast Digital Voice is a separate facilities-based IP phone service that is not affected by this technique.

Comcast customers who use VoIP providers that rely on delivering calls over the public Internet who are also using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth during a period when this network management technique goes into effect may experience a degradation of their call quality at times of network congestion."

@Rohan Singh: Yes, but then you're in the position of having customer provided equipment determining what level of QoS Comcast provides on its network. Tell me that won't be abused within 48 hours by some kid giving their BitTorrent connection the VoIP priority.

Or, as MikeHerbst said, you could have Comcast do DPI on everything you send. But aside from the network concerns he talked about, that's fraught with privacy problems too.