Cable360AM — News briefing for Wednesday, Jan. 9 »

Cable360 tipster Brain Clark never made it out of the sports book at the Las Vegas Hilton yesterday. Good morning.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin confirmed yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the commission will be investigating complaints that Comcast blocks some file sharing among its high-speed Internet subscribers, the New York Times reports. After an Associated Press investigation last year revealed that Comcast hinders some peer-to-peer file sharing, the cable operator said that some intervention on its part makes the surfing experience better for the majority of its high-speed customers.
    HDNet owner and high-profile billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban himself wrote an open letter this past November to Internet access providers asking them to "please" block peer-to-peer file sharing, complaining that much of it was commercial and that it was slowing down his and others’ Web surfing. “I’m not a Comcast customer,” Cuban wrote on his blog. “I happen to get service from Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner at various locations where I pay for Internet service. If I was a Comcast customer, I would tell them, as I am now telling all the services I am a customer of: Block P2P traffic, please. As a consumer, I want my Internet experience to be as fast as possible. The last thing I want slowing my Internet service down are P2P freeloaders. That’s right, P2P content distributors are nothing more than freeloaders.” [New York Times | blog maverick]

Comcast chief Brian Roberts said at CES yesterday that his company is the country’s fourth-largest phone service provider. [TelecomTV]

Himesh Bhise, general manager of high-speed Internet for cable operator Charter Communications, said yesterday at a CES panel discussion about making money on online video that he’s glad his company sells services that consumers are willing to pay for, Twice.com reports. Those services: cable TV and high-speed Internet access subscriptions. So far, consumers are not paying to watch YouTube videos. [Twice.com]

AT&T announced at CES that within “as little as several weeks or a month” it will be rolling out its multiroom DVR feature for U-verse TV, Xchange.com reports. [Xchange]

Cisco Systems announced at CES its IP Services Gateway, which will enable consumers to watch on their flat-panel TVs content stored on their PCs, and also its Model DPC3000 DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem. [CertCities.com]

In CableFAX Daily: FCC chairman Kevin Martin’s initial take on cable’s tru2way open platform. Yesterday’s 360AM.

• Got a tip? Email [email protected] and [email protected]

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