Verizon, Google Talk Net Neutrality

From DailyTech: Net neutrality is a very touchy subject and companies and users of the internet come down on different sides of the argument. Some feel that the internet needs to remain totally neutral and allow any type of traffic or content to be freely available. Others fee that wireless and wired connectivity providers should be able to monitor their traffic and regulate the traffic when needed.

The problem for many users is that regulation of traffic online by ISPs has historically centered on file sharing and peer-to-peer traffic which is often shown in a bad light by ISPs as used by pirates and other nefarious users. The truth is that there is a lot of perfectly legal and reasonable peer-to-peer and file sharing traffic online.

Verizon Wireless and Google CEOs Lowell McAdam and Eric Schmidt issued a joint statement on finding common ground for an open internet today. The two companies are already working together to bring new Android handsets to market so it makes a bit of sense that they would also talk about net neutrality together as well.

According to the statement, the two companies disagree quite strongly on some aspects of government policy in the net neutrality area. Specifically, a big disagreement is on whether wireless networks should even be part of the net neutrality discussion. However, both companies feel that it is imperative that the internet remain open and unrestricted to any type of content as long as that content is legal.

The statement says that the two companies understand the FCC's national plan to bring broadband to all Americans and to start a debate on the openness of the internet and how to best protect that. Verizon and Google report that they have found several common basic concepts that they agree on.

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