The difference of opinion that Level 3 and our company have over our "Internet peering" relationship has generally been well understood as simply that -- a peering dispute. But a few in the blogosphere are trying to build other theories. One of those is some recent buzz generated by one blogger in which he makes allegations about "congestion" of certain commercial traffic on our network, and he goes on to speculate from there.
We're not going to respond tit for tat on the validity of the so-called "TATA graphs" because they aren't ours, but the allegation that these graphs demonstrate that Comcast is engaging in what the blogger calls "congestion by choice" are patently false.
Internet traffic shifts and growth happen all the time and many of these are beyond any one network's control, including ours. When they do occur, or when we can reasonably anticipate them, we adjust capacity to optimize the traffic flow between our network and our fellow networks.
Trying to base a theory upon a snapshot of TATA ports in one market during a particular time period (assuming the graph is legitimate) paints a narrow, inaccurate picture. It hardly represents how the Internet functions or the capacity and varied paths between Comcast and many networks on the Internet.