Finance companies back net neutrality

TELCOS AND ISPS wanting to charge customers twice to connect to busier sites like Google and Amazon have found themselves at odds with the money men and women.

According to Reuters, the US financial sector will fight the plan which some of its spokespeople say could add billions in costs just to maintain current offerings.

AT&T, BellSouth, and Verizon Communications' plans to expand from flat pricing and also sell tiers of service based on the speed, reliability and security of the bandwidth used have received a lot of support on by Washington politicians in election year.

However, they might not be so friendly after finding that the market's biggest financial lobbyists are really against the idea.

At the heart of the backlash is a memo written by Philip Corwin, a partner at Washington law firm Butera & Andrews. The memo has been circulated amoung the great and the good in the financial industry.

It points out that net neutrality is an issue that financial services firms ignore at their peril. "If the industry does not engage quickly, it may find that the matter has been decided without its input and that the fallout will affect the industry's cost structure and customer relations for years to come," the memo said.

Apparently the financial services sector seem to have awakened late to the issue and are now trying to catch up. However now that they have become involved they have a lot of clout. The Corwin memo urged the financial industry to get the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee involved. This would spark a jurisdictional battle on Capitol Hill and slow the progress of legislation.

If that does not work they will get involved in more aggressive closed-door bargaining. µ

L'INQ
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