Verizon and Google issue joint statement promoting healthy net neutrality debate

Verizon and Google have issued a joint statement promoting a thoughtful debate on net neutrality regulation before the Federal Communications Commission decides whether to formulate rules that would ensure equal distribution of traffic on telecommunication networks. The FCC is expected to announce that decision later today.

Though the two major companies have in the past and continue to disagree on different aspects of net neutrality, they say now that they agree that access to open networks is essential to the future of the web.

"We both think it's essential that the Internet remains an unrestricted and open platform--where people can access any content (so long as it's legal), as well as the services and applications of their choice," Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam and Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote in the statement published on Verizon's public policy blog.

Verizon continues to maintain that there is no basis for new regulation while Google supports light regulation.