Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin lashed out at Comcast Tuesday in testimony before Congress, asserting that the cable company blocked peer-to-peer traffic widely, and that he doesn’t know when or even if the company will stop blocking P2P applications.

Comcast used equipment from Sandvine Inc., or similar equipment, which provides a “relatively inexpensive, blunt means to reduce peer-to-peer traffic by blocking certain traffic completely,” Martin told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. “More modern equipment can be finely tuned to slow traffic to certain speeds based on various levels of congestion.”

The FCC has conducted two public hearings focused on Comcast’s blocking of file uploads over the peer-to-peer protocol BitTorrent. At a hearing earlier this month at Stanford University in California, Martin strongly suggested the commission would take action against Comcast.

If the FCC finds that Comcast violated the principles in the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement, “the commission stands ready to enforce this policy statement and protect consumers’ access to the Internet,” Martin said.

Contradicts Comcast Claims

Martin contradicted several claims Comcast made in defense of its actions. “Contrary to some claims, it does not appear that cable-modem subscribers had the ability to do anything they wanted on the Internet,” he said. “Some users were not able to upload anything they wanted and were unable to fully use certain file-sharing software from peer-to-peer networks.”

In addition, Comcast’s blocking activities were clearly not “content-agnostic,” since Comcast has since announced plans to migrate to a “protocol-agnostic” method of network management, Martin said.

Perhaps most importantly, Martin said Comcast did not block traffic only at high-volume times, but blocked BitTorrent traffic even at low-volume times. “Based on the testimony we have received thus far, this equipment is typically deployed over a wider geographic or system area…