Comcast Filing "Net Management" Practices to F.C.C. Tonight, Company Says

Sam Gustin writes: Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, plans on making its required "network management" filing to the F.C.C. "tonight," a company spokesperson confirmed to Portfolio.com.

When the F.C.C. officially released its order sanctioning cable giant Comcast for blocking peer-to-peer traffic, the regulator gave the company 30 days to do the following:

• Disclose the details of its discriminatory network management practices to the Commission
• Submit a compliance plan describing how it intends to stop these discriminatory management practices by the end of the year
• Disclose to customers and the Commission the network management practices that will replace current practices

The deadline for those disclosure is midnight tonight. Although Comcast has appealed the F.C.C. ruling, as a matter of principle and precedent, it has also said it will comply with the disclosure order.

But Comcast's critics are skeptical that the company will fully comply with the F.C.C.'s filing order.

"What I expect is for Comcast to file something incomplete, possibly with a request for the F.C.C. to protect its proprietary data," wrote Harold Feld, of the Media Access Project, a public interest group, in a blog post.

Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, was a little more optimistic.

"We hope that with today's filing, Comcast will finally lift the heavy veil of secrecy that shrouds its illegal blocking," Scott said in a statement. "After more than a year of deception and evasion, Comcast has left its millions of subscribers with many questions unanswered."

Still, as Feld points out, if the company files late tonight, by hand, not electronically, it may be a few days before we see the contents of the disclosure.