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Net neutrality warning from Verizon boss
21 October 2009
Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg has warned the Supercomm telecoms conference that the US regulator’s order on net neutrality — expected tomorrow — will threaten investment by the telecoms industry.
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[Verizon]
[Seidenberg]
[net neutrality]
[FCC]
[Supercomm]
He warned that proponents of net neutrality misunderstand the ecosystem of the internet and that a change in the structure threatens to “interrupt the flow of private capital” into the business.
“We can’t create smart economy by dumbing down our critical infrastructure,” Seidenberg said, speaking on the first day of the Supercomm conference in Chicago.
He said that net neutrality backers believe “that network providers like Verizon and applications providers like Google, Amazon and others occupy fundamentally different parts of the internet ecosystem — a binary world of ‘dumb pipes’ on the one hand and ‘smart applications’ on the other.”
Seidenberg told the conference: “This is a mistake, pure and simple: an analogue idea in a digital universe. It fundamentally misreads how innovation happens in a dynamic and collaborative industry.”
He warned against “pitting network providers and applications developers against each other in a zero-sum game, when the real promise of broadband is an expanding pie for everybody.”
Seidenberg added: “Rather than impose rigid rules on a rapidly changing industry, the FCC should focus on creating the conditions for growth. And we need to protect consumers by insisting on transparency in the provision of products and services by all Internet providers, including applications developers.”
He said that the industry has “the opportunity to create massive change on a scale the world has never seen before.” Verizon has “invested more than $80 billion over the last five years to build these platforms for growth”, he added. “If you exclude real estate, investment in information, communications and technology accounted for an astonishing 43% of all capital investment in the US last year.” GTB
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