Comcast, Cox and StarHub are not exactly true to their users, the latest study from the German research group Max Planck released on Thursday shows. Despite the fact that Comcast has repeatedly claimed they had only interfered with peer-to-peer transfers in order to stop some users from harming other users’ experience by overwhelming the network, and that they had only used these practices at high-congestion levels, a March 18 to May 15 test revealed that in fact, transfers have been blocked 24/7.

If we take into consideration Comcast’s claims, traffic should have been blocked on periods of heavy network traffic, which mostly occur during the day. This study however revealed that BitTorrent blocking occurred at different hours of the day, and even more than that, the percentage of blocked connections remains high at all times of the day, including in the morning and in the weekends, when the network load is generally low.

The study also found a widespread blocking of BitTorrent transfers in the U.S. and Singapore, most of them coming from large ISPs, and with all hosts located in cable ISPs. Furthermore, 573 of 599 hosts that experienced blocking were located in Comcast and Cox networks, while in Singapore, all blocked hosts were connected through StarHub network.

Overall, out of 788 measured hosts in USA in Comcast network, 491 of them experienced blocking; out of 151 measured hosts in the USA in Cox network, 82 of them experienced blocking; out of 45 measured hosts in Singapore in StarHub network, 26 of them experienced blocking.

A Federal Communications Commission investigation in April this year also confirmed that Comcast used equipment that affected a large part of Internet subscribers, even when the network was not congested.  Although a common practice among ISPs, consumers are often unaware about potential limitations when they purchase an Internet service.