Criticism of Comcast
Comcast has also been widely criticized, most publicly by Netflix, for its position against net neutrality, the principle that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally.
"[2][3] In 2009 Comcast rebounded on its ACSI rating for television and Internet services, moving ahead of Charter Communications and into a tie with Time Warner Cable.
[4] When the cable television needs assessment report for the city of Fort Collins, Colorado, February 10, 2004[5] which was required for Comcast's franchise renewal, the city's independent consultant found: "Approximately 62% of the respondents, though, were very dissatisfied (along with another 25% who were dissatisfied) with the cost of cable television service."
Power and Associates published its annual customer satisfaction survey for the nation's top 10 largest cable and satellite television providers.
Since 2006, it has received more Golden, Silver and Bronze awards for poor customer service performance than any other company in the country, including Wal-Mart, Bank of America, and Ticketmaster.
The 2015 ACSI survey placed Comcast at or close to the bottom of primary company rankings in TV, Internet, and phone service.
[14] Shortly after Hurricane Ike hit the Galveston, Texas, area in 2008, customers received bills and later collection notices for unreturned equipment that was destroyed during the storm.
[15] In July 2014, technology journalist Ryan Block recorded a conversation with Comcast during which he attempted to disconnect his service, and was repeatedly met with questions from the employee.
O'Rourke contacted Comcast several times to dispute overcharging and improper fees, but problems continued for a year without resolution.
Comcast released a statement stating, "We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change, We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened.
The suit, which also claimed that the plan provided little actual coverage, asserted that Washington residents had paid for $73 million for the fraudulent services.
[26] In 2006, Comcast implemented measures using Sandvine hardware which sends forged TCP RST (reset) packets, disrupting multiple protocols used by peer-to-peer file sharing networks.
[28] In October 2007, the Associated Press reported that Comcast "actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally".
[29] In November 2007, Comcast's limiting of torrent applications was confirmed by a study conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in which public domain literature is distributed over peer-to-peer networks.
Analysis of the EFF study found "strong evidence that Comcast is using packet-forging to disrupt peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing on their network".
[35] In 2007, Comcast customers reported a sporadic inability to use Google Search, because forged RST packets interfered with HTTP access to google.com,[36] which has further angered users.
[37] In January 2008, the FCC announced that it would investigate complaints that Comcast "actively interferes with Internet traffic as its subscribers try to share files online".
On January 18, 2009, after reconfiguring their traffic management regime, Comcast was asked by the FCC to address their alleged throttling of VoIP customers.
On February 15, 2005, the TechTV brand was dropped from the United States G4techTV feed, leaving the network name as G4 – Video Game Television.
[47][48] Comcast employs the spouses, sons and daughters of mayors, councilmen, commissioners, and other officials to assure its continued preferred market allocations.
[49][50][51] Comcast occasionally lobbies against "à la carte" bills that would give consumers the option to purchase individual channels rather than a broad tier of programming.
[53] The FCC's decision to sanction Comcast for its 2007 P2P blocking was overruled on April 6, 2010, by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
The question before the court was whether the FCC had the legal authority to "regulate an Internet service provider's network management practice".
[64] On February 1, 2009, during Super Bowl XLIII, Comcast's transmission of NBC affiliate KVOA (channel 4) in Tucson, Arizona, was interrupted for approximately 20 seconds replacing the telecast of the game via NBC (which was not owned by Comcast at the time) with softcore porn from the adult pay-per-view channel Shorteez.
In October 2011, Frank Tanori Gonzalez, a former Cox Communications employee, admitted that he was responsible for the porn clip.
[70] Comcast was the first ISP in the United States to fully implement DNSSEC, having both signed all of their domain names and turned on validation on all of their DNS servers.
On November 10, 2006, Comcast announced it would add NFL Network on digital tiers in time for the eight-game Thursday- and Saturday-night package.
The New York's Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, ruled the language "concerning 'additional programming package' was ambiguous and that 'neither party has established that its interpretation of the relevant contracts is a matter of law.
On October 10, 2008, the FCC ruled as follows: In the Second Report and Order, the Commission emphasized that the statute "does not explicitly prohibit multichannel distributors from acquiring a financial interest or exclusive rights that are otherwise permissible," and thus, that "multichannel distributors [may] negotiate for, but not insist upon such benefits in exchange for carriage on their systems."
The Commission stated, however, that "ultimatums, intimidation, conduct that amounts to exertion of pressure beyond good faith negotiations, or behavior that is tantamount to an unreasonable refusal to deal with a vendor who refuses to grant financial interests or exclusivity rights for carriage, should be considered examples of behavior that violates the prohibitions set forth in Section 616."
