Verizon has moved into the "pouty-face, foot-stomping, breath-holding" phase of a temper tantrum with the FCC. In a filing earlier this week, Big Red informed the FCC that it was planning to charge Netflix extra fees for uninterrupted service regardless of whether the Title II regulation goes into effect.
For those who have missed any of the rigamarole, ever since the courts struck down "Net Neutrality" at the behest of Verizon's lawsuits, Netflix has had to pay extra interconnection fees to ISPs (like Verizon, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and AT&T) in order to ensure uninterrupted service. Since then, the FCC has been mulling over reclassifying ISPs under the Title II ruling of the Telecommunications Act, which would effectively classify them as telecommunications entities and allow the FCC to regulate them like common carrier utilities.
Verizon isn't having any of that argument though. Their latest filing claims that even if the FCC does reclassify ISPs as common carriers, that doesn't give them the authority to enforce a Net Neutrality stance, and Verizon plans to charge those extra fees to Netflix anyway.
The execs at Verizon took it even further than that though. They basically argued that if the FCC tried to enforce Title II and stopped Verizon from charging that extra interconnect fee to companies like Netflix, then they would be forced to pass those fees on to consumers instead, which would mean higher costs to its customers. Here's a snippet from their official filing,
While their argument seems logical from a surface evaluation, if you read between the lines, it becomes obvious that they are basically holding their own customers hostage in order to pressure the FCC. Verizon is basically saying, "don't mess with us FCC, or we'll shoot the customer with extra charges!" This becomes especially true when you consider the fact that Verizon has already recouped its investments in upgrading its network infrastructure, and much of their build-out was supported with government funded subsidies.
They (and other ISPs) currently have far more bandwidth capacity than needed, even in high traffic areas of the country. The obvious proof of that can be seen in AT&T's recent activations of much higher bandwidth capacities in certain areas due to the looming threat of Google Fiber coming to those areas. Most (if not all) of the ISPs need do nothing more than flip a switch to activate large swathes of currently unused bandwidth, yet Verizon is arguing they will be "forced" to pass on extra fees to consumers.
Let us know what you think of Verizon's hardcore stance.
Source: ArsTechnica
