RSS
Twitter
Net Neutrality Jujitsu Puzzles Regulation Advocates
from the unlikely-allies dept
Last week, the AT&T-backed group Hands Off the Internet coalition sent a letter to the FCC asking that they investigate Comcast for violating network neutrality for blocking BitTorrent traffic. Given HOTI and AT&T's very public position against any regulatory efforts to require network neutrality, this seemed like a strange position. Naturally, folks like Harold Feld at Public Knowledge are suspicious of HOTI's motives. Feld suggests that Verizon, which has poured millions of dollars into building a residential fiber network, is hoping to give Comcast (one of its biggest competitors) a black eye for trying to over-sell the capacity of its network. I have no doubt that Verizon is happy to highlight these differences, since it recently rolled out symmetric FiOS service that allows equal upload and download speeds. But it doesn't appear that Verizon is a HOTI supporter, so that doesn't seem likely to be a major motivation. AT&T has been less aggressive with its fiber rollout than Verizon, so it has less to crow about in the performance department. Another possibility is that AT&T is just irritated at Comcast for sparking a renewed round of network neutrality debate by violating network neutrality principles in such an obvious and bone-headed fashion.
Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
