Comcast responds to FCC: Leave our VoIP alone

Comcast has formally responded to the FCC’s charge that its congestion management practices favor its own voice-over-IP (VoIP) service, stating that its VoIP offering is a managed service and not over-the-top content running over its broadband service.

In a letter delivered to Comcast last month, the FCC had charged that the cable operator was using the latest version of its congestion management system – the one it had just recently altered in response to an earlier FCC inquiry and demand – to improperly (and perhaps illegally) favor its own VoIP service over competitors’. (Read Telephony’s detailed analysis of the entire situation here: Comcast’s Congestion Catch-22).

The FCC charged that Comcast’s favoring of its own VoIP service violated its earlier request – which Comcast fulfilled – to change its congestion management system to be protocol-agnostic. It also seemed to threaten that by treating its VoIP service differently, the FCC would be forced to regulate it as a telecommunications service subject to regulatory burdens, including intercarrier compensation obligations.

Comcast’s letter, dated January 30, attempts to refute the FCC’s charges on all counts. To start, the company says its Comcast Digital Voice (CDV) service doesn’t run over its high-speed Internet (HIS) network – the network and service to which its congestion management system has been applied. “CDV is not an application that is used ‘over-the-top’ of a high-speed Internet access service purchased by a consumer,” Comcast wrote the FCC, in a letter signed by general counsel Matthew Berry. “Significantly, CDV customers do not need to subscribe to Comcast HSI service, and Comcast does not route those CDV customers’ traffic over the public Internet. Rather, as the Commission is aware, our CDV service is based on PacketCable specifications that ‘mandate the use of a managed IP network, in that services are not delivered over the Internet.’”

Not surprisingly, Comcast pulled the competition card, noting that, “With the express encouragement of Congress and the Commission, Comcast and other cable companies have invested tens of billions of dollars of private risk capital over the past decade to develop and deploy the broadband networks that make a full range of IP-enabled services possible.”

The implication there being that if the rules – at least as Comcast understands them – were to change now, private investment in broadband, and all the economic benefits it delivers, could be forestalled.

Finally, Comcast addresses potentially the most damaging part of the FCC’s challenge, the idea that its VoIP service is a telecommunications service that should be regulated. Pointing to the FCC’s own Cable Modem Ruling, Comcast claims its digital voice service is an “interconnected VoIP service” and not an “over-the-top” information service. “Simply because an information service such as CDV uses transmission does not make it a ‘telecommunications service,’” Comcast’s letter claimed.

What happens next remains to be seen. The FCC’s original VoIP letter to Comcast was one of the last moves by the agency made under former head Kevin Martin. Will the FCC under new Chair Michael Copps pick up the cause? Will it find Comcast’s letter satisfactory or antagonistic? With Washington’s focus on economic stimulus and job creation, is the FCC ready for a fight over not only net neutrality but the structure of the telecom industry?

Stay tuned.