Free Press issued yet another heated statement yesterday on Google and Verizon's joint proposal that offers our two companies' views on how policymakers can bridge the gap in the network neutrality debate.
With action verbs like “slam” and foreboding nouns like “pact” and “scheme,” the statement is a fun summer read. But, like some other works of light fiction, it leaves one wanting more – in this case, the facts.
There are many facts missing from Free Press’s extreme pronouncements, but let’s start with some of the most important:
Fact: Our proposal enforces a tough non-discrimination requirement and promotes and protects Internet access.
Fact: It includes a presumption against all prioritization on Internet connections.
Fact: The non-discrimination provision and presumption against any prioritization are stronger than what the FCC could obtain through Title 2 reclassification.
Fact: The non-discrimination provision for Internet connections is in-line with the President’s priority on net neutrality, and it establishes specific FCC authority called for by the Free Press.
Fact: The FCC is given specific authority for the first time to oversee these provisions.
Fact: Our proposal protects Internet users by ensuring that potential services beyond robust Internet access (e.g. medical monitoring, smart grid and other ideas in the National Broadband Plan) are differentiated from the Internet and subject to GAO and FCC monitoring and reports to Congress.
Fact: Openness is fast becoming the standard in the wireless industry, as the FCC envisioned. Verizon purchased spectrum in the FCC’s 700 megahertz auction for national deployment of our 4G network, knowing it came with open access, non-discrimination and no-blocking requirements. Others are following suit.
Obviously, Verizon and Google are not policymakers. But 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.
Free Press hopes it can portray its preferred approach – applying old telephone regulations to today’s Internet ecosystem – as the only way to satisfy the FCC’s and the Administration’s goals. That is wrong and, more important, the extreme Free Press approach will harm the Internet and its users, not help them.
We believe a practical, principled and pro-consumer resolution of the network neutrality debate is within reach. But, to get there, some people need to cool the rhetoric and stick to the facts.