Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Cisco to buy Skype and end net neutrality corporate lobbying?

If Cisco does what is rumoured - buy Skype and use it for enhanced consumer video calling and wholesale P2P services to mobiles using LTE - then that removes more or less the last major corporate lobbyist (notably Jean-Jacques Sahel) in favour of some net neutrality.
Cisco of course likes Quality of Service and differentiated services as that enables it to sell fancier routers. Its recent work on the future Internet actually designs a scenario of a type of 'net neutrality leads to Paradise Lost' called 'Bursting at the Seams' (this scenario is alongside protectionism, economic stagnation and security threats).
This is the 'Silly Season' of wild rumours, so most likely the Skype share flotation (can it be worth $5b to anyone?) will go ahead...

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