Verizon EVP Tom Tauke, former Democractic Republican (thanks Art!) Congressman from Iowa, spoke today at The Media Institute’s Communication Policy Forum, offering his take on the telecom reform bills that passed the House and Senate Commerce Committee before Congress took off on a break. Tauke talked up the prospects of Verizon’s FiOS network (note: over at IP Media Monitor, we released today a report on Verizon’s Television 2.0 efforts…more later).
“FiOS is transforming the speed and flexibility of the Internet and that is a huge draw for customers. Yet the big driver of demand for fiber to the home is video,” Tauke said, arguing that Congress needs to inject the same kind of 21st century competition into video services that exists for high-speed Internet services.
Noting that “Congress had done well” so far in crafting legislation that would open the video marketplace, Tauke warned, as might be expected from a phone company leader, that net neutrality could scuttle innovation.
“Net neutrality is perhaps the oddest Washington debate I have seen. It amounts to holding a Congressional vote on hypothetical business plans,” he said. Throwing rocks at Google and Amazon.com, two big net neutrality proponents, Tauke added “I can see why some of the big companies that have done exceedingly well on the Internet of today want to lock in the current business model. They’d like to perpetuate what is working for them.”
Tauke spoke of hypothetical deals that Verizon might enter into with content providers.
For example, online video gaming is a growing business, and consumers of those sites expect a seamless experience for their role-playing and action games. Let’s say a gaming company has a game that requires 24 megabits of capacity. Consumers may be paying for Internet access speeds anywhere from, say, five megabits to 15 megabits. That company could enter into a commercial agreement with Verizon to provide online gamers the megabit burst they require for a quality experience.
During Q and A, Tauke said that he knows of no such deals that Verizon has entered or contemplated — his examples were only hypotheticals. In response to a question, Tauke also hinted that it might be very difficult for Congress to pass a telecom reform bill this session. “I think it’s fair to say that this legislation doesn’t fall into the ‘must-do’ category” given the scant number of legislative days left this year.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:57 PM | Print | Comments (1)
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