Sure, the looming threat of fines and regulation played its part, but the main reason Comcast is backpedalling is due to all the negative press and consumer backlash that has emerged since Comcast’s RST packet-injection was revealed.

Comcast cares about making money. Losing customers, or discouraging new ones from signing up, is exactly what Comcast wants to avoid.

Funchords, aren’t you happy that your ISP will soon begin managing traffic in a protocol-agnostic matter? I thought that was exactly what you wanted to happen. 9 months won’t come soon enough, but at least they have made a clear-cut committment.

As you mention, more broadband competition is crucial. Neutrality rules telling private ISPs how they can manage their networks will not encourage new entrants. We need spectrum liberalization and local franchise reform so people will have more options.

Still, 78% of U.S. households with a phone line can get DSL. So roughly 4 of 5 Comcast customers angered by Sandvine can just switch to DSL. There are drawbacks (lower throughput and more latency due to interleaving) but advantages as well(lower prices, very lenient bandwidth caps, minimal traffic shaping).

Cable and DSL aren’t perfect substitutes, but they are both high-speed internet options available to most people. And if and when LTE or Wi-Max become common that’s another choice as well. Just because the free market can’t perfectly meet every consumer need does not mean government regulation is the answer.

The reaction to this MOU from the pro-regulation crowd is bitter and angry, and I find that a bit odd. For all these many months they’re been demanding protocol-agnostic traffic management, and when they get it, it’s suddenly the most evil thing in the world.

Some people are just never going to be happy, apparently.

This is total SPIN.

Democracy and the free press defeated Comcast, who realized their actions, if discovered, would lead to regulation, which is why they hid and lied about their actions. Democracy contains the threat of regulation and taxation, and Comcast wanted to head both of those off.

The implicit threats of regulation and taxation which are always part of democracy is why libertarians seem not so very enthusiastic about democracy.

Example: Tim Lee’s refusal to answer the very simple question: Which democratically constituted government body has the authority to tax internet sales?

Kind of reminds me of the reasoning behind the complaint “No taxation without representation”

The flip side of this is that if you give people representation, you MUST give them the power of taxation.

“But in this case, it turns out that action was well underway before the issue went before the FCC.”

“Well underway” is a bit generous. Even with Comcast CTO Tony Werner reportedly acting as an adviser to BitTorrent Inc. (a relationship I cannot find disclosed anywhere prior to yesterday’s announcement), BitTorrent Inc’s learned about the protocol interference in the news.

And let’s talk about this P2Peace moment –

I think it’s strange that anyone believes a word that Comcast says. This is the Comcast that:

1.Told the government that they would not degrade traffic in order to convince officials that network neutrality regulations were not needed.

2.Started degrading P2P traffic the very next year, and failed to tell anyone what they were doing.

3.Used a system that utilized forgery, and successfully placed blame on the other peer instead of Comcast.

4.Denied it when caught.

5.Then changed their story when the denials were not believed, but still never came out and said what they were doing.

6.Then they justified their actions by throwing their other Cable-Internet brothers and sisters under the bus with their “they do it too!” defense

7.Then stealthily changed the AUP days before an FCC filing where they referred to the new provisions.

8.When the changed AUP started getting press attention, they stated that a prominent story on Comcast.net alerted millions of visitors of
the change and accused critics of crying “Wolf!” (Google cache proved that nothing alerted users to the changed AUP until the day after the press started asking questions.)

9.Then they packed the Harvard FCC hearing.

And now Comcast, whose shenanigans hit the press only 6 months ago, has generously granted itself another 9 months of continuing to violating IETF Internet Standards, the 2005 FCC Policy Statement, and the rights of its 13.9 million customers!

The Comcast agreement with BitTorrent Inc. isn’t worth the paper that it’s NOT written on!