Comcast Has Plenty of Room for Video — Its Own

Cable giant Comcast has characterized its practice of delaying legal peer-to-peer traffic as "reasonable network management" because file sharers hog so much bandwidth when they send their videos to one another.

"Managing" the traffic of video file-sharing sites such as Vuze, Comcast argues, is necessary to prevent network blockages.

But in its discussion of "network management," Comcast conveniently neglects to mention the impact of its own video service on the network.

Until it does, if inadvertently.

In a press release today — the same day that the F.C.C. announced a new public hearing on Comcast's "network management" practices — Comcast announced that its video on demand service had reached a "landmark 7 billion" viewings.

"Delivering on its C.E.S. promise to provide 'more, more, more' content choices, Comcast announced today that its signature On Demand service has reached more than 7 billion video on demand (VOD) views by its customers," read the release, referring to the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"To further illustrate the significance of this milestone," the release helpfully explained, "consider that Comcast's V.O.D. service is being accessed more times a day (about 115 times per second) than the iTunes music store (about 58 times per second), resulting in 3 billion more V.O.D. views than iTunes music downloads (only 4 billion since 2003)."

"Comcast V.O.D. is growing rapidly, it's available to the mainstream NOW and there are more than 10,000 choices available to consumers as we speak," the release said.

Network neutrality advocates are pushing the F.C.C. and Congress to ensure that broadband providers like Comcast do not discriminate against legal content in favor of their own content.

In his testimony before the F.C.C. last month, Vuze C.E.O. Gilles BianRosa said that Comcast's actions were anticompetitive and designed to hamper his company.

"We compete with Comcast with delivery of content over the internet," BianRosa said. "What we have here is a horse race, and in this contest Comcast owns the race track — in fact, the only track in town. They also own a horse. We are being told they are only slowing down our horse by a few seconds."

Comcast dismisses comparisons between its Video On Demand service and peer to peer traffic because the two services run on different parts of the network.

by Sam Gustin