Cisco on Net Neutrality: “We care about the entire value chain.”
SAN JOSE, CA - A quote by one of my colleagues in a recent article by San Jose Mercury News reporter Jessie Seyfer on net neutrality helped better frame the issue for me. Robert Pepper is a colleague of mine in Washington, DC and he has been at Cisco for almost a year now having joined us after nearly 20 years at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
In talking about what the OTT’s (over-the-top providers - Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.) want out of this debate or the service providers (ATT, Verizon, Qwest, Comcast, etc.) want out of this debate, he framed Cisco’s position thusly: ``Some of the people who are most public in this debate focus on one part of the value chain or another. We actually care about the entire value chain.’‘
This position is clearly laid out in previous posts to this blog and our position is also posted on Cisco’s external website, but I think that this quote crystalizes why I think our middle-ground, compromise position will ultimately win the day…after all, policy-making is about consensus and when both sides are happy or both sides are sad, it is said, you have done a good job of negotiating an agreement.
You can read the San Jose Mercury News article here.
Read about Cisco’s position on net neutrality here.
Posted by John Earnhardt at 05:04PM PST
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