USTelecom cited a Google executive’s recent remarks to warn Sens....

said Internet TV projects like the Skype founders’ Joost would hurt Web infrastructure, which can’t handle large-scale broadcast-quality TV and movies (CD Feb 8 p14). Dureau’s comments calling for “strategic commercial partnerships with network service providers” are “a significant departure from Google’s previous support for [neutrality] legislation,” which would ban such arrangements, USTelecom Pres. Walter McCormick wrote the senators. Even with telephone networks, “no effective network has ever been built without regard to efficiency, peak load management, prioritization of traffic and other capacity management efforts,” he said. Neutrality is a “draconian solution” that would ban network flexibility and “end the Internet as we know it” -- all the more troubling “in the absence of actual problems in the marketplace,” McCormick said. “Many breakthroughs” are on the way, from “home health” and environmental monitoring to “enhanced telecommuting,” but they require “continual investment” in infrastructure, he added. The “government-knows-best” approach to network management might have the “best of intentions” but “will quickly become outmoded” and hold back American innovation, McCormick said.