Have the telecoms and cable companies just abandoned the Net Neutrality fight altogether? It used to be they staged aggressive rhetoric battles, created questionable studies, and pretended to honor Net Neutrality on their own – without legislation.
Lately though, they seem to have gone radio silent about the matter and have even abandoned the so-called "good behavior" doctrine that kept the need for Net Neutrality protection out of the spotlight.
Often the Net Neutrality debate runs afoul of the central issues as sub-debates ensue about how much competition there is in the broadband space (not much is the answer), the wireless space, what speeds are available (pathetic compared to Hong Kong), or even the latest Washington politician to be bought by a telecom (Comcast's blocking of BitTorrent traffic. (A side argument is appropriate here, as well, regarding the cozy relationship between telecoms and government agencies – disallowing the ability to differentiate would also limit government agencies' ability to snoop on us. But let's stay on topic.)
"This [Comcast] incident is the latest in a pattern of bad behavior from the telephone and cable companies," says Ben Scott, policy director at Free Press. "This is a disturbing trend that validates all of the concerns of the Net Neutrality advocates."
In short, the problem we were looking for has been found.
Ben's comments come just as Verizon's John Czwartacki reveals on the Verizon Public Policy blog that bandwidth concerns are a thing of the past with the company's fiber-to-the-premises FiOS offering. In another post (for you side-arguers interested in where the US ranks in broadband speeds)
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