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Comcast has been well-behaved ever since the FCC smacked it down over BitTorrent throttling

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 8:32PM EST
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As amazing as it may seem, corporations’ behavior can change when federal regulators decide to step in. TorrentFreak reports on a new study from Measurement Lab showing that Comcast (CMCSA) has dramatically reduced the amount of BitTorrent traffic shaping it does despite being one of the worst offenders in the industry just a few years ago. Overall, the study found that Comcast has throttled just 3% of all BitTorrent traffic on its network in 2012, a significant drop from the days when it would routinely throttle around 50% of BitTorrent traffic.

The reason for this change of heart is pretty simple: the Federal Communications Commission slapped Comcast hard for its traffic-shaping policies and barred the company from targeting individual protocols such as BitTorrent when managing traffic on its networks. What’s more, the FCC’s actions seem to have had an impact on other ISPs as well, as Measurement Lab found American ISPs now throttle, at most, 6% of BitTorrent traffic on their networks while ISPs in Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom routinely throttle more than two-thirds of BitTorrent traffic on their networks.

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Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.