The dialogue around net neutrality has spiked lately with the FCC proposing additional guidelines. Public comment is open through mid-January 2010 so we figured now is the right time to voice our stance on the issue.

What’s at stake here is a power play between the big broadband providers and everyone else. Who should control the content, platforms, applications, equipment and traffic – all of which run over the massive networks service providers build and maintain? There are dozens of nuances to the debate, summed up well in this Wikipedia article on the subject.

From the 30,000-foot view - the new rules propose that Internet service providers cannot favor their own content or limit access based on content type. Providers must be transparent about their policies on variable Internet speeds.

It’s clear the rights of end users are the primary focus of the new proposed regulations. We agree the end user experience must continue to be the top priority, with uninhibited access a given related to the network and software they use to the hardware they plug in and the services they access online.

The Internet revolution has been people-powered from the very beginning and should remain so. The government or the private sector should not be controlling how people use the Internet.

Additionally, advanced and open networks are essential to the future development of the Web, so policies that continue to provide incentives for investment and innovation will be a vital part of this debate.

FCC's existing wireline broadband principles make clear that users are in charge of all aspects of their Internet experience—from access to apps and content. So we think it makes sense for the commission to establish that these existing principles are enforceable and implement them on a case-by-case basis.

However, in this rapidly changing Internet ecosystem, flexibility in government policy is key. Policymakers sometimes fall prey to the temptation to write overly detailed rules, attempting to predict every possible scenario and address every possible concern. This can have unintended consequences.

The FCC guidelines don’t seem to allow for reasonable network bandwidth management. We believe that service providers must have the flexibility to manage their networks to deal with issues like traffic congestion, spam, malware and denial-of-service attacks, as well as other threats that may emerge in the future.

Service providers simply need to do this in a reasonable and consistent fashion, aligned with their customers' preferences. They must not be allowed to discriminate in ways that either harm users or unfairly limit competition. But providers need to manage their bandwidth in order to offer new advanced services like IPTV.

Transparency is a must. Chairman Genachowski has proposed adding this principle to the FCC guidelines, and we both applaud and support this step. All providers of broadband access, services and applications should provide their customers with clear information about their offerings.

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