It's been widely reported that Comcast is engaged in a questionable form of Internet filtering, terminating its customers' BitTorrent sessions by sending misleading data onto the network. On Monday, however, the company finally broke silence saying the company does manages traffic on its networks, which may be delayed by its bandwidth management technology, but it does not block any applications:
"Comcast does not block access to any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent. We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications."
The executive declined to talk in detail about the technology. Although Comcast's practices seem to primarily affect file-sharing, the company claims it treats all packets equally, not blocking or "shaping" its Internet traffic. With peer-to-peer accounting for a large portion of all data sent across the net, it's reasonable that Comcast would try to manage the load file-sharing applications place on its network. The problem is that Comcast does its traffic management secretly and unpredictably.