O'Brien: Why net neutrality matters to one Sunnyvale company
By Chris O'Brien
Mercury News Columnist
Posted: 04/06/2010 04:54:13 PM PDT
Updated: 04/06/2010 04:54:14 PM PDT
If you want to understand why consumers need strong rules ensuring all traffic on the Internet is treated equally, look no further than a Silicon Valley telecommunications company called 8x8.
The Sunnyvale-based firm has been around for 23 years, and a public company for 13 years. The company survived the dot-com bust — but barely — by reinventing itself as an online telecommunications company, and since then has seen revenues rebound nicely the last five years.
For all of its innovation and survival instincts, though, 8x8 remains at the mercy of every Internet service provider.
"If AT&T or Comcast decided to block us, we would cease to exist," said 8x8 chief executive Bryan Martin.
That's not just hyperbole. The threat is serious enough that the company lists it as a risk factor in its securities filings.
Unfortunately, the attempts to put firm rules in place to protect the 8x8's of this world, so-called "net neutrality" principles, were thrown into chaos on Tuesday by a calamitous ruling from a federal appeals court.
The court said the Federal Communications Commission does not have authority to regulate the Internet. The ruling came in a case where Comcast appealed the FCC's decision in 2008 to penalize the company for blocking customers' access to a file-sharing service.
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