Verizon on Net Neutrality

Google (GOOG) announced last week that it would tackle the issue of net neutrality head-on by offering internet users the ability to find out if their providers are slowing them down or not. The FCC had cited Comcast (CMCSA) in August for blocking peer-to-peer traffic.

The pending U.S. government stimulus package contains provisions for ensuring net neutrality, but the UK has said it will sacrifice net neutrality in order to get investors to pay for the build out of broadband networks. Barron's notes that Verizon's profitable Verizon Wireless is a joint venture with the UK's Vodafone.

Will the U.S. government be tempted to have companies pay for the buildout of broadband sprectrum? The stimulus bill is approaching $1 trillion in costs.

On its Q408 conference call, Verizon (VZ) says it is in a dialogue with the government over the stimulus package.

We have been working with the administration. Net neutrality I haven’t had anybody ask me that in the last couple of weeks. I am sure it is out there some place but even some of the players in net neutrality have already modified their position on it. I don’t view that as an issue that will sort of dominate the headlines for awhile.

I’ll take the stimulus issue… I think we are part of the process... What we like are things like depreciation and tax policy. What we probably don’t like are grants that have a lot of government conditions on them… We have made a lot of investments in broadband and what we don’t want to see is additional government regulation on any new broadband that would have any sort of backward looking impact on the company.

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