Democratic Congress would push net neutrality, hurt RBOCs: USB Warburg

INVESTMENT FIRM SAYS DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS WOULD PUSH NET NEUTRALITY, HURT RBOCS
[SOURCE: Network World, AUTHOR: Jim Duffy]
In a research report issued last week, UBS Warburg says a win for Congressional Democrats in November could be a "negative" for large telephone companies. “If Democrats control Congress, the ‘net neutrality’ issue will likely come to the fore, especially in the Senate,” UBS Warburg states in the report. “They would likely make a concerted effort to pass strict net neutrality legislation that prevents the Bells from fully monetizing their large investments in fiber networks.” Strict net neutrality essentially requires the carriers to treat all packets equally, preventing them from offering tiered levels of service to online content and application providers, the UBS Warburg report states. This would also prevent them from providing additional high-value services such as security, advanced streaming and multicasting, the firm says. “It may also require them to interconnect their IP networks on a ‘nondiscriminatory’ basis, which would mean a complete re-working of the current peering system while bringing the government regulation to the IP networks for the first time,” the firm’s report states. A spokesman for the It's Our Net Coalition, a proponent of net neutrality, would not make a prediction on what might happen if the Democrats swept Congress. But he says the UBS Warburg report "mischaracterizes" the issue of net neutrality with the statement that all packets be treated equally. "Treating VoIP traffic differently from other traffic is fine as long as all VoIP traffic is treated equally," the coalition spokesman says.
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