When Amy Banse, president of the interactive division at Comcast, took the stage at San Francisco's Web 2.0 Summit yesterday, she planned to talk about Comcast’s love for video. She managed to spend a bulk of her presentation on this topic, pointing towards the future possibilities which exist for online video. Speaking along with the president of CBS’s comparable division, she agreed that there is a lot of potential for video to bring new subscribers to cable television. She says that she sees no battle between Internet and cable in this area and speaks with glowing reports about the possibilities of various partnerships down the line.

That’s all well and good but what people really wanted to know about Comcast was not their future plans for video. They wanted to know what Comcast is doing right now with traffic shaping. The company has previously denied all traffic shaping, admitting only yesterday to a “responsibility to manage the network” (for the benefit of Comcast customers, of course). Although she didn’t speak about it extensively, Banse addressed the issue on stage. She defended Comcast’s “management technology” saying that the small percentage of people who engage in “excessive use” of the system need to be managed. She points out that these customers can choose Comcast’s commercial option if they don’t want to be “managed” in this way.