The one thing Netflix and Verizon can agree on when it comes to the open Internet

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If you've been following the debate about network neutrality, you know that federal regulators have proposed some pretty controversial rules for the Web. These proposed regulations mainly deal with the so-called "last mile" -- the connection between your house and your Internet provider, like Verizon or Comcast. The question here is: should the same openness rules for last-mile connections also apply to the network relationships -- also known as "interconnection" -- between companies in other parts of the Internet?

The Federal Communications Commission views the two as entirely different issues, and the agency's network neutrality proposal reflects that. If the FCC someday develops a policy on connections outside the last mile at all, it'll be done separately from net neutrality.

Surprisingly, there's a lot more agreement on this issue than you might think between companies like Netflix and Verizon. Even though the two firms advocate different policies, in some ways both believe that the government should treat the backbone like it treats the last mile. A top Verizon executive recently made this argument on C-SPAN, saying the whole debate about Internet fast lanes is a red herring when we already allow payments for better performance in the backbone.

Netflix uses much the same logic, but to make the opposite point: If the FCC believes the last mile should be kept free of ISP interference, the same should hold true for the backbone, where Verizon is extracting payments from Netflix. Netflix told the Post that more than 99 percent of its interconnection agreements involve no money.


The one thing Netflix and Verizon can agree on when it comes to the open Internet