Jim,
So far Comcast's argument seems to be that they use ports other than port 80 to run their VoIP UDP data through, where a third party will run over the same port as TCP Port 80. Because they are two different protocols they don't interfere with each other and so making the System Strain argument is very weak. I use a third party VoIP, and if there was a better one available I'd use it, but Vontage or any of the In-House VoIP's on the market just don't get you there like VoicePulse.
The FCC has given away the farm on this one, the poles are on public easements and they should be a utility only service. They certainly get enough for their services and never reach the claimed speed or capacity that I have in my contract.
It was a bad plan right from the start that left rural areas out in the cold. The best move for a new internet service is to make it a public utility or force the providers to fulfill the promises they made when they received the huge subsidies for building in rural America and completing the last mile.
Every provider claims to have redundancy in their system, but when 4 pm comes along the systems overload and come to a crawl. When you ask why, they say "it's the time of day", when you mention to them that last week they wrote about the huge over capacity they had, they blame that on management. The fact is that we pay full price for a party line and the consumer is getting the shaft. Day by day the providers find ways to cheat the consumer a little more, they grow and merge to become too big to fail or too big to sue or too big to get a straight answer from.
