On Wednesday, Comcast Corp. said it would work together with Internet phone company Vonage Corp., as it wants to make sure the latter’s service has an easy ride over its broadband network.

The two companies are in fact competitors and Comcast has been suspected of fowl play, more exactly, there have some opinions hinting to the fact that Comcast has degraded the quality of Vonage's Internet phone service. Comcast officials were quick to deny such accusations, saying that whatever problems Vonage subscribers may have experienced were due to nothing else but peak time congestion.

At the end of February, the Federal Communications Commission has grilled Comcast over their policy of slowing down or cancelling certain types of data transfers, which are using peer-to-peer technology. Although initially the company has denied the accusations, it was eventually forced to admit that it does indeed significantly slow down certain peer-to-peer transfers, as part of a so-called "limited form of network management," which was described later on by Comcast spokeswoman, Sena Fitzmaurice, as "a reasonable choice."

The new collaboration will bring a direct communication line between the two companies’ network operations centers, which is expected to improve the way customer problems are dealt with.

In June, Comcast started trying out a new method of traffic management in three U.S. markets. The novelty of the company’s move consists of a protocol-agnostic approach that will cover all traffic, as opposed to the current strategy of peer-to-peer traffic targeting.

Vonage records show a 2.6 million-customer base, while Comcast serves about 5.2 million phone customers.