Cisco has tremendous wisdom and clarity of thought on net neutrality, which Microsoft could greatly learn from. Mr. Chambers and his Cisco team "get" the net neutrality debate. And they should. Problably more than any one single company Cisco has done more to enable the phenomenon that is the Internet today. Does anyone think for a minute that Cisco wants to kill the goose that laid the Golden egg called the Internet? It is relevant to disclose here that I tried to recruit Cisco to join NetCompetition and they declined because they reasoned their interests were much broader, straddling the tech and com sectors and not simply a broadband perspective.
John Earnhardt of Cisco's High Tech Policy blog commented to my last blog post, the open letter to Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer on why net neutrality is not in Microsoft's interest. In that open letter I advised that Microsoft, a key company that straddles a lot of markets like Cisco, should look to them as a good model to influence the net neutrality debate.
John Earnhardt of Cisco linked back to his recent post -- which Microsoft would do very well in reading and following.
Microsoft's misjudgment to throw in with the Moveon.org crowd and the extremely undisciplined loose cannon called Google as part of ItsOurNet, was a very bad one. Rather than being a powerful unalligned force in the debate like Cisco, who serious people on the Hill seek out precisely because they are unalligned in the net neutrality food fight, Microsoft has put their entire franchise at risk by subordinating Microsoft's interests and alligning with those that are not really interested in solving real problems but interested in scaring people with the outrageous and unsupportable allegations that the Internet as we all know it is on the precipice of its demise unless the Government regulates it preemptively.
Not only has Microsoft ceded its ability to responsibly contribute to the process -- they have also put themselves and their shareholders at enormous and unnecessary risk of getting their consent decree codified permanently into law and having net neutrality principle disastrously apply to them -- as I explained in my open letter to Gates/Ballmer.
Microsoft can't claim their is not a more effective and sound public policy strategy on net neutrality -- becuase Cisco has proven there is.
