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You are hereNeeded innovation that net neutrality would ban
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-02-16 14:13
Qualcomm's MediaFlo subsidiary has a network innovation and will soon have a commercial offering that will make it easier to broadcast TV content to mobile phones.
Qualcomm reportedly is spending about $800m in risk capital to gain spectrum and build a mobile broadcast network for cellphones that will be able to reach about 100 million potential users in the U.S. by mid-year.
At the core of Qualcomm's innovation is that they are creating a parallel private broadband network or broadband "tier" that prioritizes TV/movie length video over other content and applications by diverting this selected heavy-bandwidth traffic and usage to a private network for those willing to pay extra for the special benefit.
But wait a minute. There is a big wet blanket out there to this kind of innovation. Net neutrality and the Dorgan-Snowe would ban this type of "network" innovation because it would be offered as part of a "discriminatory" or differential broadband service provider's offering -- that all Internet content or Internet users could not "equally" benefit from.
In short, net neutrality and Dorgan-Snowe would ban Qualcomm's non-neutral type of innovation in favor of Google-Youtube's supposedly "neutral" innovation.
Isn't it obvious that net neutrality is just a cleverly packaged, old-school, industrial policy that picks Silicon Valley and the online giants as winners and broadband providers as losers?
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