Network Neutrality Debate Still Needs To Be Watched and Fought

You haven’t heard a whole lot lately about the network neutrality debate that was widely covered in the press months ago. Aside from the FTC conference discussing the topic last week, in which nothing new was really talked about, the topic seems to have disappeared from people’s minds that I speak to.

Someone gave me a call the other day and asked why StreamingMedia.com has not delivered a strong opinion on the matter on our website aside from the articles we have written about the subject. While I have always had a strong opinion on it and feel that neutrality is crucial, it’s also important for our readers to know that nearly no one will talk to us on record about it. To me, this is a big mistake. Too many companies are willing to tell me off-the-record about how it will hurt them but they won’t make that info public. If you think this is really bad for your business, which is would be, then stand up and make that clear in a public forum. Better yet, get together all of the other vendors in the industry and pool your press and media resources to get the word out to the media and tell them just how bad this is for your business and for consumers.

Many network companies are all working together to try and make this idea sound rationale and so far, only the big guys like Google, Yahoo! etc… are the only ones publicly opposing this. The smaller guys have just as much say in this if not more. To the vendors I say, how long are you going to wait before you start to really fight this? There is strength in numbers and the time is now.