There have been many news reports speculating about how Comcast manages it network. It is important for us to provide you with the facts.

First, and most importantly, our customers have unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications on the Web. They use the Internet for downloading and uploading files, watching movies and videos, streaming music, sharing digital photos, accessing numerous peer-to-peer sites, VOIP applications like Vonage, and thousands of other applications online.

It’s also important that we make something very clear: Comcast does not block access to any Web site or applications, including peer-to-peer (P2P) services like BitTorrent. We also do not discriminate based on the type of content.

So, what do we do? We use the latest technologies to manage our network so that our customers continue to enjoy these applications.
We do this because we feel it’s our responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience.

As numerous studies show, peer-to-peer activity consumes a disproportionately large amount of network resources, and therefore poses the biggest challenge to maintaining a good broadband experience for all users – including the overwhelming majority of our customers who don’t use P2P applications.

We never prevent P2P activity, or block access to any P2P applications, but rather manage the network in such a way that this activity does not degrade the broadband experience for other users. Network management is absolutely essential to ensure the health of our network for all of our customers. All major ISPs manage their traffic in some way and many use similar tools.

Network management helps us protect our customers from things like spam, viruses, the negative effects of network congestion, or attacks to their PCs. As threats on the Internet continue to grow, we will do everything we can to ensure that our network management tools evolve and keep pace so that we continue to maintain a good, reliable online experience for our customers.

Mitch Bowling
Senior Vice President
Comcast Online