Philadelphia - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV provider and a provider of broadband service to nearly 13 million customers, announced on Wednesday a collaborative agreement with VoIP provider Vonage, "to ensure that network management techniques are chosen that effectively balance the need to avoid network congestion with the need to ensure that over-the-top VoIP services like Vonage work well for consumers."

Comcast has come under close scrutiny since it was revealed the company was actively interfering with the file-sharing traffic of its customers, and has pledged to instill a "protocol-agnostic" means of managing its network bandwidth.

Free Press, a media reform advocacy group, called the announcement "baffling."

"We are baffled as to why it was necessary for Vonage to strike a network management agreement with Comcast to guarantee that their services are not degraded or blocked. Such anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices are already against the law," said Free Press general counsel Marvin Ammori.

"Was Comcast degrading Vonage's VoIP service before this announcement? And are they continuing to degrade other services that compete with their products? That these questions remain unanswered by today's announcement is cause for great concern."

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http://www.freepress.net/node/42255

http://www.comcast.com