Comcast (CMCSA) is challenging an FCC ruling that blocked the company from slowing down Web traffic from peer-to-peer fille sharing applications such as BitTorrent.

The FCC voted 3-2 in early August that treating certain types of Web traffic differently violated its "net neutrality" principles, which state that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.

Comcast says while it will comply, it is still appealing the order "to protect our legal rights and to challenge the basis on which the [FCC] found that Comcast violated federal policy in the absence of pre-existing legally enforceable standards," EVP David L. Cohen said, in a statement.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin told Bloomberg he's "disappointed" by the challenge, and that "it was important for the commission to continue to protect consumers' unfettered access to the Internet."

Even before the FCC's ruling, Comcast announced a different strategy to keep the most prolific consumers of bandwidth from overburdening their network: It will slow down users based on how much bandwidth they're using -- not based on what software they're using. And as of Oct. 1, the company will impose a cap of 250 gigabytes a month for residential customers, a move that could affect about 1% of Comcast's 14.1 million broadband subscribers.

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See Also:
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Comcast's Diet For Bandwidth Hogs: A 20-Minute Timeout
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