The Upside: Killer Sales Tips from the folks at Glance Networks

Glance submitted the following comments to the FCC for the hearing yesterday (25 Feb 2008) in Cambridge at Harvard Law School debating Net Neutrality.  A representative from Glance, who attended the hearing, reported that there ensued quite an interesting discussion of basic rights, policy, competitiveness, innovation and some deep technical issues.  More on that below...

Comments on FCC Hearing in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Broadband Network Management Practices
February 25, 2008

Docket Numbers:  07-52 and 08-7

Glance Networks is a small Internet business with headquarters in Arlington, MA and customers all over the country and the world.

The issue of "traffic shaping" or "traffic throttling" is not just about bitTorrent, and it's not just about limiting file sharing.

Glance Networks provides a legitimate web conferencing service to thousands of mostly small and medium sized businesses.  They use our service to demo their products, do sales presentations and train over the Internet. 

Traffic throttling systems do not typically distinguish between file sharing and businesses streaming media content such as ours.

This is not just a theoretical or a potential issue.  Our business is being effected right now in Canada.  Our customers in Canada on Shaw Cable and Rogers Cable have been seeing this kind of traffic throttling for several years now.  It's gotten to the point that when someone calls up saying their session is incredibly slow, the first question we ask is: "Are you in Canada"?  "Are you on Shaw or Rogers Cable"?

Our business and our customers' business depends on high quality broadband Internet.  The Internet is an open infrastructure that has allowed the creation of hundreds of thousands of small businesses and new