Comcast Vows to Smooth Access for Vonage Users

Amid growing regulatory scrutiny, Comcast said Wednesday it would collaborate with Vonage Corp. to ensure the Internet phone company's service runs more smoothly over Comcast's broadband network. Under the new arrangement, Vonage and Comcast will have a direct line of communications between their network operations centers to resolve customer issues, the companies said. Vonage will also participate in testing the impact of Comcast's network management techniques on its service. Comcast says the arrangement will allow it to better balance the management of its network at peak times. Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press, responded, "We are baffled as to why it was necessary for Vonage to strike a network management agreement with Comcast to guarantee that their services are not degraded or blocked. Such anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices are already against the law. And beyond that, Comcast has been on the record as saying that they do nothing to deter their customers' use of VoIP. This announcement calls into question the company's honesty about its treatment of competing services."
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