Cisco CEO John Chambers wasn't too impressed with President Obama's call for strict Internet neutrality this week.
Net neutrality is the concept that everyone with an Internet connection should have equal access to all legal content online.
"I think it was a major mistake to revisit Title II" of the Communications Act of 1934, which governs telecommunications carriers, he told
CNBC. Chambers believes Internet service would suffer from strict neutrality.
"You won't be able to introduce the digitization of companies in business," he said.
"Imagine having a conversation with your doctor about your health, and the video goes down. Or you're operating mining equipment remotely over the Internet, and because you can't get a given quality of service, the equipment breaks down or runs into things."
"To go back to a 1950s voice mentality with Title II and net neutrality would be a tremendous mistake for our country."
Bottom line: "this is a very bad decision," Chambers said. "I think the whole country has to rally [against it]. This will cost the country jobs and economic leadership."
The Federal Communications Commission will have to decide whether to follow Obama's guidance, and it's not clear yet whether it will do so.
Meanwhile, Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution and Hal Singer of Economists Inc. advise against treating the Internet as a public utility.
Doing so would "reduce ISP [Internet service provider] investment at the core of the Internet by more than what it stimulated at the edge by content providers, resulting in a net loss in investment," they write in a paper published by the
Progressive Policy Institute.
In addition, such a move "could one day boomerang on certain major tech companies or be expanded to regulate other ISP offerings."
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