The Washington Post reported Monday night that a San Diego company has filed a complaint against Time Warner Cable alleging that TWC has breached the FCC’s new net neutrality rules.
In the complaint, Commercial Network Services (CNS) argues that Time Warner Cable is unfairly charging it money to carry traffic from webcams that CNS operates in San Diego.
The company claims that the rates violate the net neutrality order’s ban on paid prioritization — or allowing websites to pay for faster delivery to broadband customers. It says it is entitled to a “settlement-free” peering deal with Time Warner Cable so it can connect to the networks at certain points without paying the fees.
“This behavior on a public Internet exchange directly degrades BIAS consumer quality of service by unnecessarily increasing latency and virtually eliminating the possibility that they will be able to enjoy the broadband quality access to the Internet that they are paying for unless the edge-provider has agreed to a ‘commercial transit arrangement’ and paid TWC its ransom,” the company said in its complaint.
Time Warner defended its policies.
“TWC’s interconnection practices are not only ‘just and reasonable’ as required by the FCC, but consistent with the practices of all major ISPs and well-established industry standards,” the company said.
“We are confident that the FCC will reject any complaint that is premised on the notion that every edge provider around the globe is entitled to enter into a settlement-free peering arrangement.”
The FCC declined to comment on the complaint.
