At the MassNetComms meeting yesterday, I thought Link Hoewing (ass’t vp of Internet and tech issues at Verizon) gave a telling example he intended to support the case against Net neutrality. (I mentioned this in my live blogging of the event, but I want to call it out here.)

Link said that Verizon might want to offer a service that connects a community with its local hospital for medical help. Verizon would prioritize this vital medical traffic. Community members could choose to pay for the service if they wanted it. Surely this is a valuable offering—medical help, voluntary, community-based—but Net neutrality would forbid it.

Yes, it might well be a valuable offering, although if Verizon could get sick puppies into the example it would pack more rhetorical punch. But, the problem with allowing Verizon to prioritize traffic is not that there are no valuable services Verizon could offer. Of course there are. The problem is that if I come up with the same idea for a service, I am at a competitive disadvantage because Verizon’s service will work better than mine.*

This is one of the difficulties in making the Net neutrality case: Violating Net neutrality benefits particular services that customers may want, but it has a systemic chilling effect on innovation. [Tags: net_neutrality verizon ]

Categories: Uncategorized dw