Comcast’s Xfinity TV App Offers New Interpretation of Net Neutrality

By Karla Robinson
March 29, 2012

Comcast may be ignoring the concept of net neutrality as it looks to make its Xfinity TV app more competitive on Xbox Live.
Going up against top streaming services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO Go and Vudu, the Comcast app is setting itself apart by offering free data usage when streaming via Xbox 360.
Comcast allows its customers 250GB of data per month before they charge overage fees. VentureBeat says this cap is “generous,” enabling about 80 hours of content on streaming services as well as regular Internet use. While using Xfinity on other devices or Xfinity.com will still use up the allotted monthly data, the Xbox Live app doesn’t contribute to the data cap.
Comcast has said that “since the content is being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet, it does not count against a customer’s bandwidth cap,” differentiating it from other usage that relies on “public” Internet.
VentureBeat writer Tom Cheredar suggests the move “takes the concept of net neutrality, and throws it right out of the window,” and that the private network justification seems like a bit of a stretch.
“I’m not sure I buy this logic. Arguably, Netflix also has its own ‘private’ network that is only accessible through the ‘public’ Internet,” he said.

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