Comcast vs. Vonage

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 2

Hi,

My name is Joscelin from Voip-news.com. We are looking into the alleged blocking of Vonage service by Comcast and would like to run an article with some of the community's test results. Please contact me with information about the user/users who called for the testing and some conclusive results from the tests that we can use in a news story.

Thanks for your help!

Joscelin
jcooper@tippit.com

Posts: 2 · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:23 pm Post subject: Me too.

I'm vonage and Comcast user in Southfield, Michigan. The service has become progressively worse over the last two weeks. At the same time, none of my other internet activities has shown any signs of problems.

I will not be altering any of my hardware as it has functioned just fine all this time.

I will not pay twice by having Vonage squeezed to pay Comcast for a service that I have already bought and paid for. I'm not sure if its legal or not but I wont stand for it. To bad FCC folded and DSL has no desire to compete. Still if I have to I'll go back to DSL.

Comcast needs to get their arse in Gear. If I notice any problems today I will send a letter to comcast complaining about this. I will CC it to the attorney general as well as the better business bureau. If I lived in Detroit I would also send it to the cable board as I believe they have a board. If I find southfield has such a board I will notify them as well.

I do not like to be extorted. These jokers just raised the prices anyway. They're already in the dog house.

Posts: 2135

Joscelin wrote:

Hi,

My name is Joscelin from Voip-news.com. We are looking into the alleged blocking of Vonage service by Comcast and would like to run an article with some of the community's test results. Please contact me with information about the user/users who called for the testing and some conclusive results from the tests that we can use in a news story.

Thanks for your help!

Joscelin
jcooper@tippit.com

Hi Joscelin:

If you look, starting on page two of this thread, many members have posted the results.

Smile

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 27, 2005 Posts: 8

One of the bigger problems with Comcast is they have, essentially, a monopoly on broadband services.

I live in the northeast (New Hampshire), and there aren't (to my knowledge) other options that are reasonably priced with similar performance. I'm not about to drop to DSL, if I can help it.

As I recall, I believe they acquired Adelphia, too (was available locally).

Posts: 26

Joscelin wrote:

Hi,

My name is Joscelin from Voip-news.com. We are looking into the alleged blocking of Vonage service by Comcast and would like to run an article with some of the community's test results. Please contact me with information about the user/users who called for the testing and some conclusive results from the tests that we can use in a news story.

Thanks for your help!

Joscelin
jcooper@tippit.com

Tell us what test you would like us to run, and next time it goes down I will run the test.

Thanks

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 27, 2005 Posts: 8

I'll be happy to run tests, too. Though I'm not on Vonage's network, however an application/script could be devised to test over the same ports -- a series of tests from different geographical areas will be more substantive.

Posts: 2 · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:47 pm Post subject:

forrie wrote:

One of the bigger problems with Comcast is they have, essentially, a monopoly on broadband services.

Indeed. You can thank Michael Powell's FCC for that. His position was that competition between cable and DSL would be sufficient and there was no need for inter-cable company competition.

For whatever reason, the bells don't desire to compete on internet access but are content to die a slow death.

As an aside, this is why I am 100% against "internet 2." QOS will be the end of equality. Sad

Posts: 44 · Full Forum Member Joined: Feb 21, 2006 Posts: 44

Joscelin wrote:

We are looking into the alleged blocking of Vonage service by Comcast and would like to run an article with some of the community's test results. Please contact me with information about the user/users who called for the testing and some conclusive results from the tests that we can use in a news story.

Besides this thread you can search on my user name and find my initial results of several tests. I would also be open to running additional tests up to the point where I abandon the providers for not providing the service.

Things seem to have improved, but I'm again seeing packet loss to vonage.com but now only 12% as opposed to 40-60%. I'm even beginning to question the tests because I assume one could easily tailor routers to pass ICMP packets at a higher priority while still causing problems with VoIP packets. This only occurs during the daytime hours.

Ping statistics for 216.115.22.200:
Packets: Sent = 55, Received = 48, Lost = 7 (12% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 39ms, Maximum = 60ms, Average = 39ms

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 27, 2005 Posts: 8

I wonder if local network congestion could also be a problem here, in certain circumstances. That's a variable we need to add to the mix.

Depending upon how many people you have surfing on your "leg" of the network, your response times for different traffic may vary.

To make a clear case, tests would need to be made from different geographical areas and at different times of the day (even late night).

Posts: 26 · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:29 pm Post subject:

For what it is worth, the fcc has an complaint e-mail address on their web page, http://www.fcc.gov/contacts.html

fccinfo@fcc.gov