COMCAST ACCUSED OF PACKING FCC HEARING

Cable giant Comcast was accused Tuesday of hiring people off the street in Boston to pack an FCC hearing on Internet neutrality at Harvard University on Monday. Among other things, the commission was looking into charges that Comcast routinely slows down or blocks access to peer-to-peer networks. Critics of the cable provider posted pictures on the Internet of the alleged seat-fillers sleeping during the hearing; others acknowledged on audio tape that they were being paid to fill seats and didn't know what the hearing was about. The company later acknowledged that it had paid some people to act as placeholders for Comcast employees who wanted to attend the hearing. Meanwhile, on another matter, the NFL was celebrating the decision by a New York appellate court that overturned a lower court ruling that Comcast was in its rights to put the NFL Network on its sports tier rather than include it among its basic cable channels.

27/02/2008