Verizon: Nondiscrimination, Prioritization Proposals Are Stronger Than Title II
John Eggerton -- Multichannel News, 8/25/2010 3:38:22 PM
A top Verizon spokesman said Wednesday that the company's proposals on nondiscrimination and the presumption against prioritization on any Internet network connections were stronger than the FCC could achieve through Title II reclassification.
That came in a blog posting by Verizon executive director media relations, David Fish, the latest move in the ongoing network neutrality parry and thrust between industry and advocacy groups.
Fish was responding to criticisms by Free Press of Verizon's network neutrality policy accord with Google.
In a joint statement earlier this month, Verizon and Google said they support an enforceable prohibition on disrimination or prioritizing any content on the Internet. But it also left open the possibility of prioritizing content on differentiated broadband services that are not delivered over the public Internet, and said the principles should not be applied to the "different" and rapidly changing mobile marketplace.
Free Press took issue with that differentiated services proposal and the wireless carveout. While Fish did not address the latter, he suggested such differentiated servcies are a way to insure that medical monitoring, smart grid
applications and other national purposes get the bandwidth they need.
The Federal Communications Commission has encouraged industry players to try and come up with compromise language for legislation that would clarify its ability to oversee broadband access, openness and deployment. That could be an alternative to the FCC's current proposal to reclassify broadcband transmissions under some Title II regulations.
Fish made that point in his blog. "Verizon and Google are not policymakers," he said, "[b]ut we were encouraged by real policymakers to see what two companies at near opposite ends of the issue could come up with to help bridge the gap."
While FCC-hosted talks on targeted legislative language have ended, most of the same parties, including Verizon, AT&T and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, have continued talking.
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