Skype lobbies Silicon Valley on broadband stimulus spending

With billions of dollars earmarked for broadband stimulus, Skype wants Silicon Valley to know how spending should be tweaked to "protect the innovation" for which the area is known. Currently, NTIA is slated to distribute $4.5 billion, while the Department of Agriculture will get to hand out $2.5 billion.

In an op-ed piece published Feb. 12 in Mercury News, Skype President Josh Silverman says the broadband build must "adhere to openness standards" to truly be effective. Skype wants net neutrality requirements as a condition of government grants and tax credits, otherwise there will be an "inevitable trend" toward closed networks. After all, the original Ma Bell - AT&T before the breakup - once kept the Mickey Mouse phone off of its network, so who knows what its descendants might do.

Of course, the most interesting irony here is that while Skype is owned by eBay, the company's corporate headquarters is in Luxembourg and a lot of its executives are based in London. Regardless where it calls home, Skype wants to make sure that U.S. taxpayers build a broadband network open to its best interests.

For more:
- Mercury News runs Skype op-propaganda piece. Article [1].