The Federal Communications Commission is set to announce this week that Comcast wrongly throttled the Internet traffic of some of its customers.
The FCC will rule that Comcast violated federal policy by purposely blocking some subscribers from sharing videos through online file sharing services. The company has admitted it slowed some traffic, but maintains it was done to prevent a handful of heavy users from slowing the whole network. 
The FCC decision is scheduled to come Friday and would set a precedent in the debate about what phone and cable companies can do to generate more revenue from their Online networks. The ruling by the FCC is expected to be challenged in court and it would cement the agency’s role to monitor how Internet providers manage online traffic. The agency has focused more attention on the issue as more users watch online videos that take up more bandwidth. On Friday three of the five FCC commissioners voted in favor of finding that Comcast violated federal policy by throttling some Internet traffic. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he believes that all Internet users should have “unfettered access to the Internet.” The FCC will require Comcast to stop slowing or blocking access to sites and be more transparent with its subscribers about how it manages traffic. Comcast has implemented the majority of what the FCC requested and will not be fined. Comcast said it had to take action against the small number of customers who share large files on peer-to-peer networks because they use a large amount of bandwidth. “We continue to assert that our network-management practices were reasonable, wholly consistent with industry practices and that we did not block access to Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services,” Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal.
