Not Neutrality

NOT NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: In These Times, AUTHOR: Brian Cook]
Why are the Communications Workers of America opting out of the Save the Internet coalition? Last May, when the House was considering pro-neutrality legislation, CWA President Larry Cohen wrote a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, arguing that if such a bill passed, “investment in the physical infrastructure necessary to provide high-speed Internet would slow down, the U.S. will fall even further behind the rest of the world, and our rural and low-income populations will wait even longer to enter the digital age.” Meanwhile, at the state level, the CWA has vociferously opposed attempts, most notably in Michigan, to mandate net neutrality in the local and state franchise agreements with telecommunications companies that set up conditions of service quality and community benefit provisions. Debbie Goldman, a research economist at the CWA, says the union is simply more concerned with building out networks and increasing their speed, which she believes will render moot any concerns about congestion. “If we have 100 mbps, we’d have so much capacity that the whole issue [of congestion] goes away,” Goldman says. “The real goal is getting big, big broadband so that there isn’t an issue of congestion, which then raises concerns about whether there’d be different types of service. That’s the real goal: How do you get it built? How do you get to big broadband?”
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3081/not_neutrality/