Sprint Throws The Other Carriers Under the Bus; Says Net Neutrality is Good for Consumers

[dgstorm]

When you read about the big carriers like Verizon and AT&T crying and whining about Net Neutrality and Title II classification hurting them, you can safely ignore that poppycock. Sprint just threw them all under the bus by coming out in favor of Net Neutrality.

Stephen Bye, Sprint's Chief Technology Officer, recently made Sprint's position clear that ISPs being classified as utilities by the FCC under Title II is a good thing for consumers. He also shared that it won't effect Sprint's investments in network infrastructure, and he went as far as to call out the other carriers by disagreeing with their arguments that it will hinder their investments. Here's a quote with several of his statements,

"It's one of those topics that is highly charged, highly politicized and we took a step back and said it works in the interest of our customers, our consumers and the industry and we frankly found some of the arguments (of our competitors) to be less than compelling."

Bye added,

"Our competitors are going to continue to invest so they are representing a situation that won't play out.

He even offered up the recent $44.9 billion spectrum auction shattering records in the industry as proof that the carriers aren't slowing down. He shared that it is a, "great proof point of the level of investment the companies in the industry are willing to make."

Bye concluded that,

"The notion that some of our competitors are suggesting that they will stop investing if Title II is brought into effect... That's something we've refused. In the terms of Title II with the appropriate forbearance we made the point that we really don't see this as negative for the industry at all."

It will be interesting to see if and how the other carriers respond to Sprint's bold admission.

Source: Reuters

 

[cybertec69]

Everyone will fall in line, they will scream and kick for a bit "like a 3 year old", but in the end they will fall in line, no choice to the matter, if you want future spectrum you will have to play nice with the FCC.

 

[kodiak799]

Of course they will continue to invest, but you add red tape and potentially price controls and you WILL get less investment than otherwise.

Also, the bandwidth/net neutrality argument doesn't really apply to mobile where most customers are on some capped or limited type of plan. I expect the broadband providers would respond with data caps - if they can't charge Netflix and other video services extra then they'll have to figure out a way to pass the cost needed to add capacity as a result on to consumers.

 

[furbearingmammal]

In Europe the telecoms are in favor of net neutrality. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/06f9a38e-a18c-11e4-b176-00144feab7de.html#axzz3RsZ0d3mn

It's not investment the telecoms here are actually worried about, it's profit. They're worried that if they lose the ability to nickle-and-dime the consumer and content providers, and tariff the crap out of companies like Netflix, they won't continue to make record-breaking profits with minimal network building. They're also afraid that they'll have to reinvest more than the bare minimum of their income in building up their network backbones to cover the increased traffic they'll get once they get classified as "big, dumb pipes" as one person put it.

Sprint recognizes that what's good for the consumer is, ultimately, good for the companies that support them. Good on them.

 

[swc2001]

I Love Sprint.....
Verizon..... Its just a matter of time!!!