Google and Verizon walked into a barrage of opposition from public
interest groups in Washington on Monday as they formally announced a
joint proposal for how traffic on the internet should be regulated.
The biggest US internet and telecommunications groups said their plan,
the first reports of which emerged last week, would ensure all services
on the internet were treated equally – “net neutrality” – and the web
would remain a fully open medium.
But they said network operators should be able to charge more for a
category of services that travel over a higher-quality connection
separate from the public internet. They also proposed that wireless
companies should be free to block individual internet services, provided
they disclosed their actions.
Services likely to travel over the communications “fast lanes” included
high-bandwidth content such as healthcare and education and
entertainment such as 3D video, said Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon chief
executive.
The greater freedoms proposed by Google and Verizon drew condemnation
from public interest groups that have supported the Obama
administration’s push for net neutrality.
Free Press claimed the plan would “divide the information superhighway,
creating new private fast lanes for the big players while leaving the
little guy stranded on a winding dirt road.” The Center for Democracy
and Technology said that while it supported the rules that would prevent
discrimination, the extra freedoms the groups were proposing would
undermine the plan’s value.
Early reports of the joint proposal had already prompted strong attacks
on Google, with critics claiming it was backing away from its commitment
to net neutrality in favour of an approach that would mainly favour
rich, established groups.
Eric Schmidt, chief executive, defended his company’s position. Google
continued to believe in an open internet supporting future generations
of internet upstarts, he said. He said Google would not pay to be
carried on the new “fast lanes” it was proposing, but would use the
existing public internet for all its services, including YouTube.
Existing financial relationships between internet and communications
groups created enough incentives for network operators to keep investing
in the internet, he said.
The Federal Communications Commission last week called off talks aimed
at agreeing rules for net neutrality, and has proposed extending its
regulatory remit to enforce a set of internet rules.
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8a51ac88-a405-11df-a872-00144feabdc0.html>
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