At the Web 2.0 Summit, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski had some firm words about Verizon and Google’s attempt to derail the FCC’s plans to eliminate carriers’ ability to prioritize and throttle particular wireless data.
“I would have preferred if they didn’t do exactly what they did when they did. It slowed down some processes that were leading to a resolution.”
This largely echoes the FCC’s official response over the summer, that the the Google-Verizon proposal only resulted in more talk rather than more action.
There’s certainly a degree of worry that comes with perpetually living online lives under Google’s watchful eye, considering their primary business is in advertising, and obviously Verizon has a vested interest in pushing their own premium services and apps down the wireless pipe before others, but that bandwidth costs money to acquire in the first place, and with the growing demands on networks, Verizon’s still entitled to a bit of traffic curation. Obviously the CTIA sides with carriers, but it’s still the FCC’s job to keep the general public’s interests in mind first and foremost. That being said, it’s probably a bad thing that Verizon and Google bogged down action on something that would improve net neutrality in wireless, but there’s a lot of room for debate on the issue. Where do you stand?
[via TechCrunch]