Opportunity is ripe for company executives to push potentially lucrative services such as digital cable, video on demand and high-speed Internet access.
Chief executive Brian Roberts contends customers' entertainment and information options will only increase. Comcast is "committed to trying to give consumers choices of their Internet service providers," he told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
But critics fear that Comcast -- able to control how its Internet customers access the Web and get movies, interactive games and other features still in the broadband nursery -- will choose to steer people to its own services and to programming that brings it revenue.
"Is it going to be this open world, or something competitive and proprietary that shifts users into a carefully managed environment?" wonders Harold Feld, attorney for the Washington-based Media Access Project.
Comcast's newfound heft has created an unlikely coalition of consumer-advocacy groups like Media Access and huge companies including Microsoft and Walt Disney.
In a Nov. 18 letter, they urge federal regulators to do its utmost to oblige telecommunications providers -- be they Baby Bells or cable companies -- to give competitors equal access to their high-speed networks.
The letter followed the FCC's approval of Comcast's AT&T Broadband acquisition, forming a cable leader nearly twice as large as No. 2 AOL Time Warner. The FCC decided not to require that Comcast guarantee equal access to competitors.
In a separate letter, Microsoft counsel Gerard J. Waldron warned that widespread high-speed access will accomplish little if consumers cannot freely roam the Internet, run the applications they want using the equipment they choose and connect to Web sites absent interference by network operators.
Of course, even the new, giant Comcast doesn't dominate Internet access yet.
Its 3.3 million high-speed Internet customers is dwarfed by the 26 million U.S. subscribers for America Online, which includes about 3 million broadband subscribers to Time Warner Cable's Road Runner network and scattered others.
"As far as market power and who controls the gateway for more customers, broadband is still a much smaller slice of the Internet pie," said Michael Harris, president of broadband research firm Kinetic Strategies.
But it is growing fast, with 20 million U.S. and Canadian homes expected to have high-speed service via cable modem or souped-up phone lines called DSL by year's end.
Feld worries that the companies that control high-speed connections will increasingly control Internet access, as Web sites add features that take advantage of the speed, making dial-up connections less useful.
Critics say cable operators could give preferential treatment to business partners or make competitors' content difficult to find or slow to load. In fact, a 1998 regulatory filing from the now-defunct ExciteAtHome envisioned storing materials from business partners locally, making them faster to deliver over cable systems.
Comcast counters that it has started giving some customers alternatives to its own high-speed service.
In some cities, they can use Juno, NetZero and EarthLink. The company has agreed to make AOL available in 10 million homes over the next two years and has offered to give Microsoft access under similar terms, Roberts said.
Comcast spokeswoman Jenni Moyer wouldn't comment on the letters to the FCC, but she pointed to a Nov. 7 filing by Comcast and AT&T Broadband that said the new partners "have not and will not restrict their subscribers from accessing any content on the Internet."
Dan Brenner, a vice president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, has called critics "a group in search of a problem", noting that there have been no specific consumer complaints.
Charter Communications and Cox Communications have experimented with lower-cost services with slower download speeds of 200 to 250 kilobits per second, about a third as fast as a high-speed cable or DSL connection.
Retiring AT&T Chairman C. Michael Armstrong, now chairman of the new Comcast, said in Senate testimony earlier this year that technology exists to track "Net hogs" and charge them more. Comcast's Roberts told the Senate panel it would be "very logical" to charge according to consumption.
Similarly, Harris said, cable companies could make access to competitors' products an extra-cost feature.
That would threaten the openness of the Internet, particularly for those wanting to send or receive movies, games or any streaming video programming that depends on high-speed capability, said Dave Burstein, editor of DSL Prime, a broadband newsletter.
"This is about what you are allowed to watch on television and which church service you can get streamed to you on Sunday morning," Burstein said. "We're ready to have an explosion if there are no tollbooths on the Internet."
Copyright 2002. Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
