BOULDER, Colo. — Could the once-boiling debate over network neutrality be headed back down to a saner simmer?
That was the question, or maybe the quest, of most of the discussion Sunday at the Silicon Flatirons conference here on the University of Colorado campus, one of the pre-eminent events for telecom policy wonks in the U.S. While no consensus was reached — c’mon, we’re talking about a room full of lawyers — there was at least a better-than-average amount of time spent trying to debunk myths and provide real information from both sides of the argument.
Speakers in favor of neutrality regulations were heard admitting that not all network management is a bad thing, and that there may not be enough evidence yet to prove there is a neutrality problem. Speakers who usually favor little or no regulation, meanwhile, were heard discussing the need for strict anti-merger policy against allowing, say, a telco to buy a cable company, as well as possible “intermediate measures” like limited laws to ensure open access. And several speakers put forth the wishful notion that rapid increases in available network bandwidth might render the whole discussion moot before lawmakers needed to make a choice.
“This has been a very un-Washington discussion,” noted Cisco’s Robert Pepper, the former longtime FCC chief of staff who now heads up the router giant’s D.C. policy team. “In the Washington world, they want a lot of good false choices,” Pepper noted. “And the ultimate false choice is one that fits on a bumper sticker. But chaos vs. tyranny is not a very fruitful debate.”
The Silicon Flatirons conference, which usually draws about a hundred or so of the most-influential D.C. telecom lobbyists, lawyers and policy wonks, has played no small part in the net neutrality debate. In 2004, it was the place where then-FCC commissioner Michael Powell first put the four Internet Freedoms — the base issues of the net neutrality debate — into the public record. And in 2005, Silicon Flatirons was where Stanford law professor Larry Lessig publicly revealed that Vonage had complained to the FCC about having its VoIP service blocked. (The program now even has a compilation of event highlights.)
While several speakers Sunday sheepishly admitted that net neutrality might be something of little concern outside of Beltway lobbying and legislative circles, net neutrality did slip into the mainstream last year, with rock artists, movie stars and a Daily Show spoof of Ted Stevens’ Tubes rant reaching at least a wider Internet audience. So when the top telecom minds in Boulder start discussing real issues and possible solutions, perhaps the rest of the discussants will follow.
“The real question is how do we get better networks,” asked Cisco’s Pepper. “It’s not an all or nothing deal.”
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