Madison River Communication LLC commits that it will refrain from blocking VoIP traffic and ensure that such blocking will not recur, the FCC said in a statement. Madison River does not admit wrongdoing.
The settlement comes after the FCC began investigating claims by Vonage that the telco was blocking ports that Vonage’s VoIP service uses, presumably in order to prevent Vonage customers moving away from Madison River voice services.
Port blocking is sometimes used for good, for example for blocking outgoing spam from compromised endpoints. This is the first case of an ISP being said to block VoIP ports. Vonage reportedly estimated about 300 customers were affected.
