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Verizon says no plans to throttle P2P traffic

by on12 February 2008

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Will not rule out the possibility


Verizon
took the rather aggressive step of making it clear Monday that it has no plans to degrade P2P/BitTorrent traffic in the near term; but the company said that it will not rule it out in the future.

Comments from Tom Tauke, Verizon VP, came as somewhat of a surprise since many of the big providers have recently come under fire for blocking and degrading customer traffic that is P2P/BitTorrent related. Several consumer groups have launched an effort to get the FCC to rule that degrading P2P/BitTorrent related traffic is a violation of the FCC’s own Internet policy.

Tauke claimed that Verizon has a more robust network than cable providers, which is in part due to the fact that subscribers have a dedicated line to their homes rather than a shared bandwidth design that cable providers employ.

Tauke has said in the past that his company wants no part in policing the Internet for the transfer of copyrighted content using its network. It has been suggested that Verizon wants to make its position known since it is in stark contrast to AT&T, who has said that it will launch plans to police the users and content transferred on its network. In addition, Verizon says that it will continue to be as transparent as possible with its intentions if it were to change its policies or practices in relation to the company’s position on peer-to-peer traffic.

Last modified on 13 February 2008
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