Now here’s some good news:
Some of the largest hardware makers in the world, including 3M, Cisco Systems, Corning and Qualcomm, sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday firmly opposing new laws mandating Net neutrality–the concept that broadband providers must never favor some Web sites or Internet services over others.
That view directly conflicts with what many software and Internet companies have been saying for the last few months. Led by Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, those companies have been spending millions of dollars to lobby for stiff new laws prohibiting broadband providers from rolling out two-tier networks.
“It is premature to attempt to enact some sort of network neutrality principles into law now,” says the letter, which was signed by 34 companies and sent to House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “Legislating in the absence of real understanding of the issue risks both solving the wrong problem and hobbling the rapidly developing new technologies and business models of the Internet with rigid, potentially stultifying rules.”
Legislating in the absence of real understanding of the issue is pretty much what the so-called net neutrality thing is all about.
I like the second part of the quote too…“Legislating in the absence of real understanding of the issue risks both solving the wrong problem and hobbling the rapidly developing new technologies and business models of the Internet with rigid, potentially stultifying rules.”
Gee, that’s surprising. I wonder what kind of hardware they’re selling to the carriers?
Could it be the Cisco Service Exchange Framework, for which the marketing literature almost comes out and giggles over the ability to rein in third-party content providers (Google, eBay, whatever)?
Given the carriers’ history, handing them Cisco SEF without strong FCC enforcement power is a really, really bad idea.
Not really. Google has a private, unregulated network with server farms located very close to the last mile. Their video download service is capable of generating enough traffic to kill anybody’s VoIP but theirs, and with the legislation they’re pushing the ISPs would be powerless to manage Google’s video traffic. A switch like Cisco’s is going to be necessary to actually restore any semblance of Internet equality.