The Apple/Comcast deal […] would have Apple’s video streaming traffic « separated from public Internet traffic over the ‘last mile’——the portion of a cable operator’s pipes that connect to customers’ homes. »
[…] « [This] certainly could violate the Comcast-NBC merger’s Net Neutrality conditions, but it’s not 100 percent clear, » Matt Wood, policy director of consumer advocacy group Free Press, told Ars. « One of the many reasons that Free Press criticized the 2010 Open Internet rules as too weak was this managed services vacuum. No one could be entirely clear about what kind of services would be allowed. We’ve already seen Comcast try to take advantage of this loophole […]. »
John Bergmayer, senior staff attorney at consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, said, « If there does end up being a ‘specialized service’ argument, it again shows what a loophole that concept is. You shouldn’t be able to just slap a ‘specialized service’ label on a net neutrality violation. A specialized service should be some kind of service that cannot work over the normal Internet at all, or something that due to health or safety reasons has very low tolerance for jitter. »
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/apple-wants-its-own-path-on-comcast-network-for-video-service-wsj-says/