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BitTorrent users targeted by Comcast

Comcast CTO Tony Werner gets the last laugh on the most ardent BitTorrent users on his network, as the company plans to slow down all Internet traffic for them.

Comcast won't break BitTorrent traffic any longer, as it had been caught doing so in the past. In the wake of Comcast and BitTorrent finding some common ground to discuss P2P traffic living nicely with the broadband provider, Werner announced Comcast would take a broader approach to those the company perceives as bandwidth hogs.

"In the event of congestion, the half percent of people who are overutilizing an excessive amount of capacity will be slowed down subtly until capacity is restored," he said in a New York Times report. "For the other 99.5 percent, their performance will be maintained exactly as they expect it."

BitTorrent's biggest users on Comcast should see their service degradations begin by the end of the year. Considering the typical monopolies on broadband service in communities, one cable and one phone company being the norm, affected customers will have minimal opportunities to switch.

Though additional bandwidth might be welcomed by Comcast's customers, there doesn't appear to be much enthusiasm to accept the expense of building additional capacity. Werner derided calls for faster service like Japanese customers enjoy, which hits 61 to 100 Mbits in speed, at prices Americans pay for current speeds.

Werner's stance is that Japanese providers also have to manage their traffic. One might expect that more capacity would be easier to manage, but with broadband providers like Comcast able to squeeze fantastic profits out of minuscule speeds they do provide.

The only true hope for making the Internet a commodity comes from the potential for more municipalities to enter the market to provide high-speed services, a prospect the likes of broadband providers have lobbied against heavily at the state and federal levels.

Essentially, Internet customers in the US are captive to enriching people like Werner at the expense of breakthrough gains in bandwidth or service. It's enough to make you long for the personal attention of protection rackets and their enforcers in the neighborhood.