Josh Silverman v. Verizon at Brookings

Guest post by Mark Poole, member of the Skype 5.X Discussion

Skype CEO Josh Silverman joined FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Free Press's Ben Scott and Verizon government affairs VP David Young for two hours at the Brookings Institute today. These are Mark Poole's notes from that panel.

This webcast spotlighted the issue of access. When the discussion turned to open access via the cell network, someone used the description dumb pipe. It's not the copper line, fiber optic line or the wireless signal flowing between cell towers that is dumb. The leadership of companies that provide these pipes is dumb.

"The exact expectations you have of your PC, you're going to have of your mobile phone." — Josh Silverman

The guy from Verizon really gave a glimpse into the thinking of wireless providers. He wanted on one hand to say they applaud openness to the Internet but then offer excuses why a program like Skype might not work over his network.

Rather than plan for a robust system that will handle demand today and five years from today and at the same time charge a fair price for use of their pipe, they want to try to compete with companies that offer web stores to sell applications. He described Verizon Widgets and the FiOS cable offering. He spoke of value add services Verizon can provide developers who sell through the Verizon store. Verizon's greed may be their undoing.

Silverman did a good job of diplomatically pushing Verizon to move to more open access. The potential problem with open access and Verizon along with other cell providers will be if they continue strong arm tactics when it comes to plans they offer. Charging ten to twenty bucks for monthly unlimited texting and forcing customers into high monthly minute plans, so they can get promotions like Friends and Family from Verizon, run contrary to where we should be today. It's all about access without regard what we do with that access. This is another example of dumb company leaders not dumb pipes.

Silverman presented the notion that open access for all will allow rapid innovation to continued. He pointed out how the cycle time for new technologies, disruptive technologies was getting shorter and shorter. He tried to stroke the ego of the cell providers by telling the Verizon rep that what they were doing by providing access was not really providing a dumb pipe but instead a complex job.

From my perspective the public interest won out completely. One of the other participants said the speech by the FCC chairman (.pdf) today was a paradigm shift. He looked back to two other shifts and differentiated today's by saying that the previous shifts were more about the rights and ultimate profits of a few instead of policies that favored an individual's rights and use of the Internet. Today's speech was clearly aimed at keeping access to the Internet open and with as few speed bumps as possible when it comes to high speed access.

See also:

• Skype CEO Lobbies for Skype on 3G, Om Malik
• FCC Backs Net Neutrality — And Then Some, Ryan Singel
• Genachowski's 'open Internet' guidelines offer few specifics for wireless, Mike Dano
• The new EU Telecoms laws must be finalized so as to protect Internet users' basic right to an open Internet, Jean-Jacques Sahe, Skype EU Government Relations
• FCC Chairman wants network neutrality, wired and wireless, Nate Anderson. "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski waded directly into the network neutrality fight today, launching a new proceeding designed to turn the FCC's existing "principles" into "rules"—and to add two more. The rules would apply equally to wired and wireless connections."
• Yup, the FCC supports Net Neutrality all right, Nicholas Deleon. (Great metaphors

Julius Genachowski speech at Brookings on Two New Rules

tags: skype, brookings, freepress, verizon, joshsilverman, events

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