As activists and tech giants look to push public awareness to government changes to open internet rules by sponsoring Wednesday’s “Net Neutrality Day of Action,” the antagonists of the narrative, the telecom companies themselves, are using the occasion to hammer home their own messages.
“As we have consistently pointed out, Title II legislation and net neutrality are not the same thing,” said David L. Cohen, senior executive VP and chief diversity officer for Comcast, blogging the cable company’s position this morning.
“We wanted to reinforce today—to the public, our customers, regulators and legislators—what we’ve been saying and doing for years. We support permanent, strong, legally enforceable net neutrality rules. We don’t and won’t block, throttle or discriminate against lawful content. We also believe in full transparency; you’ll know what our customer policies are,” Cohen added.
Also taking to the blogosphere with an unnamed posting, Charter insisted that it doesn’t “slow down, block or prioritize traffic in an uncompetitive manner.” The No. 2 cable company said it just wants to sit down with the Republican-led FCC and Congress and put down some cool rules, pronto.
“Working together with the FCC and Congress, we can build a regulatory framework that actually protects and ensures an open internet while allowing the broadband ecosystem to flourish,” Charter said in its statement. “In doing so, we’ll protect consumers, unleash innovation, spur greater network investment and create lasting benefits and opportunities for businesses, entrepreneurs and workers across the entire U.S. economy.”
Led by Facebook, Snapchat, Amazon and other tech giants, “Net Neutrality Day” was created as an online protest to ongoing work by the FCC to reverse rules passed two years ago governing the internet.
Speaking for the entire cable industry, the NCTA took care to respect the viewpoint of the noble opposition.
“The Day of Action isn’t designed to educate consumers about sensible policies, rather its goal is to scare them into thinking their internet experience will somehow suddenly be degraded if the FCC restores light touch regulation. Don’t believe the hype,” NCTA said in its own blog posting.