Netflix CEO’s Comcast Complaints Draw in FCC

Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings’ complaints about Comcast’s Web traffic policies appear to have drawn attention from the Federal Communications Commission, which says it is monitoring the situation.

The FCC said late April 16 it “takes seriously any allegations of violations of our open Internet rules.” Currently, the FCC’s Open Internet rules allow for Internet service providers to treat traffic moving over their private Internet networks differently to traffic on public networks. But the FCC has acknowledged, in December 2010 when it outlined its rules about what it calls the Open Internet, that there are risks involved with allowing Internet service providers to provide “specialized services,” which “share capacity with broadband Internet access service over providers’ last-mile facilities.” The FCC said then that the Open Internet “may be weakened” if Internet-service providers “constrict or fail to continue expanding network capacity” allocated to other Internet services, and instead simply provide more capacity for their specialized services. If that occurs and if those services grow as “substitutes for the delivery of content, applications, and services over broadband Internet access service,” the FCC wrote, “the Internet may wither as an open platform for competition, innovation, and free expression.”