The Federal Communications Commission might sanction Comcast for blocking traffic in what is supposed to be an arbitrary manner. The complaint was filed to the commission at the end of 2007 by the consumer group Free Press, which said that the internet service provider was blocking some users’ access to some peer2peer applications among which BitTorent was mentioned.

The FCC Chairman, Mr. Kevin Martin said that Comcast has broken some regulations concerning open access to the internet and should therefore face punishment. However, Mr. Martin said that the ISP should not be fined because of its practice.

Comcast has previously denied in front of the press and the FCC the fact that it blocks access to certain applications, but further studies have shown that the internet provider wasn’t telling the truth. The company latter revised its statement saying that it does block some user’s access to p2p services, but that it does so only when the network is congested. This statement was also contradicted by a German study conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, which found out that Comcast applied the same practices at times when the network had fewer traffic also.

All these prompted Mr. Kevin Martin to consider that the ISP is not having a reasonable network management. Mr. Martin also proposed the commission should sanction Comcast by imposing a deadline until which the company should change its network management and stop prioritizing the applications that run on the network and consume bandwidth.

If Mr. Martin’s proposal is applied, an important precedent that will benefit internet subscribers will be created. Of course, Comcast was not satisfied with the proposal.