Verizon: Interconnection is Not Net Neutrality Issue

Verizon told the Federal Communications Commission that it needs to keep the issue of interconnection and traffic exchange among networks separate from the open Internet proceedings and that, in any event, it cannot apply Title II regulations to interconnection, as some have proposed.

Verizon points out, as have others, that the FCC itself has historically deemed those interconnection agreements distinct from network neutrality. It also says those agreements are "quintessentially private carriage agreements and cannot be regulated as common carriage." Verizon says that net neutrality remains a last-mile issue, and that interconnection agreements are individualized responses to the business models of some content providers, like Netflix, which "have consumed an increasingly large share of Internet traffic." Verizon told the FCC that regulating interconnection agreements, "would only cripple this flexible, market-based dynamic that has played a key role in the explosive growth of the Internet."