REUTEMAN: Comcast takes cake for big, fat PR gaffe

By Rob Reuteman, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Saturday, March 1, 2008

This fall, when the 2008 edition of Fortune's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business is being compiled, rest assured Comcast will be in the top 10, maybe top five.

The company admitted this week it hired people to fill seats at a federal hearing held Monday to examine complaints about how it handles subscribers' Internet traffic. Critics charge that more than 100 people were turned away from the hearing, partly because of three dozen paid "seat warmers," some of whom were asleep in their chairs.

Comcast said it did hire people to hold places in a cramped law school lecture hall at Harvard University. But spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said the seat-fillers gave up their places once Comcast employees from the Boston area arrived. Unfortunately for Comcast, that assertion was roundly disputed by the hearing's organizer.

"I think it's disingenuous to say they were holding spots for Comcast employees," said Catherine Bracy, administrative manager of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "No employees came in to take those seats when the event started."

Fitzmaurice declined comment on Bracy's rejoinder. But she did contend that Comcast hired the seat-holders only after an advocacy group, Free Press, urged people to attend.

Comcast said in a statement, "For the past week, Free Press has engaged in a much more extensive campaign to lobby people to attend the hearing on its behalf."

That's another foot in the mouth as far as I'm concerned. The hearing was held for the Federal Communications Commission to listen to arguments about whether Comcast purposely slows down some forms of Internet traffic, mostly file-sharing, while giving priority to others. This runs counter to the widely held notion of "Net neutrality," which holds that all forms of traffic be treated equally. If Free Press has a gripe with Comcast, it had every right to attract supporters to the FCC hearing. Comcast had the same right, but it opted instead to pay dolts to sit there quietly or just sleep. (By the way, a video of the hearing, including footage of the napping seat-warmers, is available at fcc.gov/. A much shorter version is available on YouTube, but that video was posted by Comcast critics.)

I happen to be a contented subscriber to Comcast's high-speed Internet service. And I am sympathetic to its point of view in this debate. Comcast, the nation's second-largest Internet provider, argued Monday that it doesn't block any Net services but temporarily delays some traffic during times of network congestion.

Mitch Bowling, senior vice president of online services, testified, "We have to engineer and manage the network for typical usage of a vast majority of users. We are simply managing the network for the greater good."

I don't know enough about file-sharing or Net neutrality to weigh in intelligently. But I do know a big, fat PR gaffe when I see one. With the possible exception of Countrywide - which owns my mortgage - planning a posh ski outing at the Ritz in Avon, Comcast takes the cake so far this year.

What has happened since? The very next day, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo subpoenaed Comcast for information about its Internet management practices. He'll hold feet to the fire. Negative stories have appeared in The Washington Post, Detroit Free Press, Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe and Rocky Mountain News. The FCC reportedly has now scheduled a second hearing on the issue, this one at Stanford, a hotbed of Net neutrality advocates led by faculty member Larry Lessig. It'll be ugly, and here's a warm-up:

"What the Comcast behavior really demonstrates is that there's little reason to trust this organization," Lessig said this week. "They can throw out technical reasons for why they're (slowing traffic). But packing the auditorium at an FCC hearing? Why would you trust the future of the Internet to this sort of entity?"

Business editor Rob Reuteman can be contacted at 303-954-5177 or reutemanr@RockyMountainNews.com. Add your comments at RockyMountain News.com/business.

• March 1, 2008

  7:32 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  immunizer writes:

  It is good of you to report on Comcast's most recent PR gaffe, but you somehow managed to buy most of the bs they are shoveling.

  "Comcast ... argued Monday that it doesn't block any Net services but temporarily delays some traffic during times of network congestion. "

  If you call up your Mom and one second into the conversation I break in and say to you, in your Mom's voice "I'm done talking to you" while saying the same thing to your Mom in your voice, is that like delaying the traffic? No, that's more like impersonating your Mom and it certainly resembles blocking traffic more than it does delaying traffic. Yet this is exactly what Comcast has been doing. TCP/IP has all sorts of facilities for notifying hosts of network congestion, yet Comcast has not made use of these. Instead, Comcast uses the hammer that is the RST flag - for reset - and sends these to both sides of the connection, forging the address to make it look like the other side "hung up". Some people argue that this is in fact against the law, as Comcast is impersonating opposite ends of the connection. At any rate, what they are doing is not simply "delaying" traffic - they block it and then lie about blocking it. And you believe their lies.