Verizon: Comcast P2P blocking was wrong, we won't do it

Verizon isn't a fan of the FCC's proposed "third way" approach to network neutrality rules, and the company's top policy people have suggested that the Internet needs an entirely new "policy framework." Such a framework will require massive wrangling in Congress, so in the short term, Verizon has partnered with Google and others to find a "consensus" framework for the short-term.

Is this a plan to avoid government rules on openness and turn the company into a maniacal bit-blocker? At a recent panel discussion, Verizon policy exec Link Hoewing said no—the company has no wish to go down Comcast's P2P blocking route, and he called out Comcast for its earlier approach. "We came up with a standard that says any of the players on the Internet should not do anything that harms users or competition," said Hoewing. "And I think that's a pretty important policy principle. Because what it says is that, take the Comcast case, in that case, they were using reset packets and it clearly did harm a lot of users. They were not able to use the Internet, some of them. So that principle basically says you can't do that kind of thing, even if it's network management to deal with congestion problems. That's not appropriate." Verizon is one of the sponsors of a new private-sector group that hopes to work out network management principles -- and Hoewing argues that such a group could have saved Comcast from itself.