Study: Cox, Comcast Internet subscribers blocked

A study released Thursday found conclusive signs that file-sharing attempts by subscribers of Cox Communications were blocked, along with customers at Comcast and Singapore's StarHub.

Of the 788 Comcast subscribers who participated in the study, 62 percent had their connections blocked. At Cox, 54 percent of subscribers examined were blocked, according to Krishna Gummadi at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Saarbruecken, Germany. The institute examined the network connections of 8,175 Internet subscribers around the world.

Philadelphia-based Comcast is the country's second-largest Internet service provider, with 14.1 million subscribers. Atlanta-based Cox Communications is the fourth-largest, with 3.8 million. It is part of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc.

Comcast's practice of interfering with traffic was brought to light by user reports last year and confirmed by an Associated Press investigation in October.

Consumer advocacy groups and legal scholars criticized the interference, saying that letting a service provider selectively block some connections makes it a gatekeeper to the Internet, violating the network's open principles. Their complaints prompted the Federal Communications Commission to launch an investigation, which is ongoing.

Legislation also has been introduced in Congress to guarantee "Net Neutrality," or equal treatment of traffic by Internet service providers.

"This research proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that consumers, Congress and the FCC must urgently pursue the complaints against network providers," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, one of the groups that urged the FCC to fine Comcast.

FCC spokesman Rob Kenny said the agency would review further complaints about Internet blocking "expeditiously."

File-sharing programs like BitTorrent, which let people exchange documents, songs, movies and other content, can be heavy users of Internet bandwidth.