You would think with all of the policy debates surrounding broadband policy in recent months that Verizon is not in the same place as Google on almost any issue.  But that is not true.  Google’s Policy Counsel Pablo Chavez just wrote an excellent post on the importance of making permanent the Internet Tax Moratorium and on this issue I can say we are in exactly the same place.

 

What Google argues persuasively is that content and applications providers have a special reason to want to see the moratorium extended.    The extension includes provisions that prohibit multiple or discriminatory taxation of online applications or services.   He explains that this would ensure that online services – which often cross multiple jurisdictions in reaching their ultimate destination – are not put into an unfair position vis-à-vis services or goods they might compete with that are sold out of “bricks and mortar” stores.

 

As a company that is a communications and network company, we provide access to content through our networks but we are not involved in developing that content.  We rely on companies like Google to provide consumers with services and applications they want and need so that our broadband services are in demand.  There is a “virtuous cycle” at play here as we build networks with more capacity while consumers, content and applications providers find new ways to take advantage of those networks.

 

It may not often seem like we can not see eye to eye in the broadband sector but we are all part of the high tech sector, driven by ever more capable networks and more imaginative content and applications.   We too believe the Internet Tax Moratorium should be made permanent and on this one, I’ve “Googled” the same answer as Pablo.