Reardon is fine with this vision of your online future.

Marguerite Reardon confesses she’s confused.  She doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about regarding Google and Verizon teaming up to deliver a blueprint for a corporate compromise on Net Neutrality.  In a column published today, Reardon is convinced she’s on a debunking mission — to deliver the message that rumors of the Internet apocalypse are premature.

As I read the criticism of Google and Verizon’s supposed evil plan to demolish the Internet, and as I hear about “protests” of several dozen people at Google’s headquarters, I scratch my head and wonder: am I missing something?

The Google-Verizon Net neutrality proposal I read last week doesn’t sound nearly as apocalyptic as Free Press, a media advocacy group, and some of the most vocal critics out there have made it sound.

In fact, most of proposal sounded a lot like a plan FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski offered nearly a year ago, which many Net neutrality proponents seemed to support.

In short, Google and Verizon say they agree to a set of rules for the Internet that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or degrading lawful content on the Internet. Broadband providers would also not be allowed to take action to impede competition.

This is pretty much what Genachowski has proposed.

OK, terrific. There is agreement.

But wait, Net neutrality zealots are still unhappy.

Hmmm… “zealots?”  Reardon probably just angered the majority of CNET’s readers, who now find themselves labeled as crazed Internet online freedom fighters — net fundamentalists who want absolute protection against big Internet Service Providers tampering with their Internet Experience.

Where can I get my membership card?

Reardon’s “debunk” consists of her narrow, inaccurate definition of Net Neutrality pounded into a pre-conceived notion of what is and is not possible in a competitive broadband marketplace.  In short, she’s satisfied we can all move along… there is nothing to see here:

What Free Press and Public Knowledge don’t seem to realize is that AT&T and Verizon already offer differentiated services today with enhanced quality of service to business customers. Verizon’s Fios TV and AT&T’s U-verse TV services are also examples of managed Internet services that are delivered to consumers. And the last time I checked, no one, other than their cable competitors, has complained about AT&T and Verizon offering competition in the TV market.

The truth is that if Verizon and AT&T wanted to cannibalize their broadband business with premium broadband services, they’d already be doing it. But they aren’t, because there hasn’t been a market for it.

The reality is that consumers are in control of what type of services are offered. If the public Internet can adequately deliver a service for free, then there’s no need to pay for it. But if someone can provide a better service over a dedicated network and there are consumers willing to pay for it, then why shouldn’t it be offered? Isn’t that why some people subscribe to a 768Kbps broadband service for $15 a month, and others pay $100 for a 50Mbps service?

So let’s debunk the debunk.

First, Net Neutrality is not about stopping broadband providers from offering speed-based tiers of service.  In fact, that’s the Internet pricing model we’ve all come to know and love (although those prices are just a tad high, aren’t they?)  Free Press and Public Knowledge do not object to ISPs selling different levels of broadband speed tiers to consumers and businesses to access online content.

Net Neutrality isn’t about stopping ISPs from selling some customers “lite” service and others “mega-super-zippy Turbo” service — it’s about stopping plans from some ISPs to establish their own toll booths on the Internet to charge content producers twice — once to upload and distribute their content and then a second time to ensure that content reaches a particular ISPs customers on a timely, non-speed-throttled basis.  Consider this: you already pay good money for your own broadband account.  How would you feel if you sent an e-mail to a friend who uses another ISP and that provider wanted to charge you 20 cents to deliver that e-mail?  Don’t want to pay?  That’s fine, but your e-mail might be delayed, as paying customers enjoy priority over your freebie e-mail.

A lot of broadband customers may never understand the implications of giant telecom companies building their own toll lanes for “preferred content partners” on the Internet because they’ll just assume that stuck online video or constantly rebuffering stream is the fault of the website delivering it, not their provider intentionally pushing it aside to make room for content from companies who paid protection money to make sure their videos played splendidly.

Second, Reardon need only look to our neighbors in the north to see a non Net Neutral Internet experience in Canada.  There, ISPs intentionally throttle broadband applications they don’t want users running on their networks.  They also spank customers who dare to try what Reardon insists Verizon would never stop — using their broadband service to watch someone else’s content.  With the application of Internet Overcharging like usage limits and consumption billing schemes, cable companies like Rogers don’t need to directly block competitors like Netflix.  They need only spike customers’ broadband bills to teach them a lesson they’ll not soon forget.

Within days of Netflix announcing their imminent arrival in Canada, Rogers actually reduced the usage allowances of some of their broadband customers.  If you still want to watch Netflix instead of visiting Rogers pay-per-view cable menu or video rental stores, it will cost you plenty — up to $5 per gigabyte of viewing.

Reardon seems to think giant providers like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast care about what their customers want and wouldn’t jeopardize the customer relationship.  Really?  She herself admits she hates paying for hundreds of channels she never watches, yet providers are deaf to complaints from customers demanding an end to this practice.  What about the relentless price hikes?  Wouldn’t that drive off customers?  Perhaps… if customers had real alternatives.  Instead, with an effective duopoly market in place, subscribers pay “the man,” pay an almost identical price from the “other guy,” or go without.

Providers understand their power and leverage in the marketplace.  Until serious competition arrives, it would be a disservice to stockholders not to monetize every possible aspect of broadband service in the United States.

The check against this naked aggression on consumers’ wallets is from consumer groups who are fighting against these big telecom interests.

Before dismissing Net Neutrality “zealotry,” Reardon should experience the Internet in Canada and then get back to us, and more importantly those consumer groups she flicks away with disdain, and join the fight.

Dream On: WildBlue's home page shows a user thrilled about an Internet experience she'll never truly enjoy with a monthly usage limit at low as 2.3GB. Exceed it and face the consequences: WildBlue's Time Out Corner: a speed throttle delivering 128kbps downstream and just 28kbps upstream.

When is broadband not broadband?  When it is delivered by hopelessly overloaded and underpowered satellite providers that annoy their subscribers with high prices and low usage allowances.

For many customers of WildBlue and HughesNet, getting high speed Internet access remains a far off dream. No broadband Internet service is more rationed and speed throttled than satellite “fraudband.”

Most satellite broadband customers live in America’s most rural areas, literally miles away from the nearest telephone exchange and often hundreds of miles away from a town with cable broadband.  Even wireless Internet providers can’t find enough customers to justify the costs of delivering service.

For America’s most rural, there are three choices:

1. Go without.
2. Use dial-up service.
3. Choose the least annoying satellite provider you can afford.

Just over one million Americans have stuck it out with choice number three, paying twice as much wired Americans pay for broadband and getting just a fraction of the speed and use.

But both providers claim that is all about to change.

WildBlue and HughesNet are in a hurry to launch brand new satellites with dramatically improved capacity that will deliver, they claim, “speeds as fast as fiber.”

For Stop the Cap! reader Adele in a rural part of Arizona, she’ll believe it when she sees it.

“As Stop the Cap! has said all along, anyone who thinks satellite ‘broadband’ is a useful alternative to DSL or cable Internet should be condemned to use it,” she writes.  “Everyday brings a new frustration, especially with so-called ‘Fair Access Policies’ that effectively restrict your use to web page browsing and e-mail.”

HughesNet explains how their satellite service uses your satellite dish to send and receive Internet data. (click to enlarge)

For many people running Microsoft Windows, the company’s monthly gift of bug fixes, service packs, and updates is just a minor nuisance. For satellite Internet customers, it can sometimes mean the “day of no Internet.”

Adele explains:

If you have multiple computers and Microsoft determines it has a lot of screw-ups to fix, the monthly updates can easily run into the hundreds of megabytes when every computer receives their individual updates.  HughesNet’s “budget” Home and Pro Plans cost up to $70 a month and only include a daily allowance of up to 300 megabytes.  It’s no trouble at all to exceed that usage on increasingly large web pages loaded down with video advertising, pop-ups, and other content.  Now deal with Microsoft Update Day and in our house, that means you get a good book and stay offline.

If she doesn’t, HughesNet inflicts a stinging punishment — 24 hours in the time out corner with barely dial-up speed penalties for exceeding the limit.

But both satellite providers promise better days ahead when their newest satellites are launched into space.

The New York Times notes WildBlue’s next generation of satellites will bring 10 times the capacity of its three current satellites combined.  That opens the door for faster satellite broadband, according to both companies, without price increases.

HughesNet believes satellite broadband’s best days lie ahead, especially as a contender in the rural broadband market.

“One advantage satellite has is ubiquity,” Arunas G. Slekys, vice president for Hughes Network Systems, said. “The cost of reaching you with a satellite dish is independent of where you are. Fiber or cable is labor-intensive and dependent on distance.”

As to satellite’s potential in rural regions, “clearly, there’s an unserved market,” Mr. Slekys said. “And it’s not as though they have terrestrial or satellite. They only have satellite as a choice.”

Can a new generation of satellites save satellite broadband?

One question the Times didn’t ask is whether increased capacity will mean the end of so-called “Fair Access Policies” that strictly ration the amount of browsing customers can manage before the speed throttle punishment begins.  Neither company is saying.

“When pigs fly,” Adele thinks.  “Sometimes these satellite companies think rural people are just plain stupid.  When you live this far out in the country, you learn to recognize snake oil salesmen when you see them.  Why give us more access when nobody else will provide the service?”

The sudden interest in satellite broadband in the nation’s paper of record is no coincidence.  Both HughesNet and WildBlue are upset they are not getting a bigger piece of the broadband stimulus pie.  The Times notes just $100 million out of $2.5 billion in U.S. Department of Agriculture grants for rural broadband will go to satellite companies.  Raising the question in a newspaper widely read in Washington can’t hurt your cause.

Thomas E. Moore, chief of WildBlue, said satellite technology would be able to serve thousands more rural residents than terrestrial services at a fraction of the cost. He cited a $28 million grant to a nonprofit group in North Carolina to extend fiber to 420 schools and libraries. That same grant could have instead directly served 70,000 residents in North Carolina through satellite service, Mr. Moore said.

“For every one of those people, there are literally hundreds more who won’t have access to stimulus funds,” he said.

But Joseph Freddoso, president of MCNC, the nonprofit group that manages North Carolina’s public education technology network, said satellites were not an ideal primary service for his users, who require a more reliable network for their research and data-heavy applications.

“To compare what we do with what satellite does as a service is an apples-to-oranges comparison,” Mr. Freddoso said, adding that the grant will serve one million students in 37 counties.

Adele is concerned that means even more people will fight for the limited resources satellite has until the next generation of satellites get launched, especially for rural customers trying to share a spot beam in North Carolina.

“These companies have really stopped heavily promoting themselves in parts of rural America because both are already at or over capacity in many places,” she says. “The advertised speeds for some parts of the country are straight out of Alice in Wonderland — total fiction, and with the lag time that comes naturally from sending and receiving data over a distance of 22,000 miles, it’s not getting any better.”

Adele is referring to the satellite providers’ regionally-directed signals.  Much like how satellite TV companies can deliver local stations within limited regions of the country, satellite Internet service can be divided up and delivered to certain parts of the United States.  One beam might serve rural Louisiana, another could be directed to northern California, and so on.  Once a region’s capacity nears saturation, speed and performance suffers.  In areas where capacity remains underused, the service performs better.

Regardless of the promises for enhanced satellite broadband, most cable and fiber broadband providers spend no time pondering the competitive impact, because there is none.  They plan to continue ignoring the likes of WildBlue and HughesNet for years to come.

Kevin Laverty from Verizon told the Times their FiOS fiber network is expensive to deploy but is light years ahead of satellite when it comes to speed and easy upgrades.

“Fiber optic is virtually an unlimited technology,” he said. “All you have to do is change the electronics on either end.”

A spokesman for Time Warner Cable said cable broadband speeds already easily exceed the satellite providers’ proposed new speeds, so they have nothing to worry about.

For most satellite customers, WildBlue and HughesNet are not choices, they are realities if rural Americans want to participate in the broadband revolution.

“Nobody chooses these satellite providers over DSL, cable, fiber, or even most wireless ISPs,” Adele says. “They choose satellite because of the absence of these other providers.”

Should Adele’s local phone company offer her DSL or a wireless broadband provider arrive to deliver service, would she switch away from HughesNet?

“In a shot,” she says. “I dream about throwing their dish into the biggest bonfire I can build and then my neighbors and I visit their headquarters to horse-whip them for years of horrible service and throttled speeds.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Satellite Fraudband.flv[/flv]

We’ve assembled some examples of advertising for both HughesNet and WildBlue, typically seen on networks catering to rural Americans, a brief interview with a representative from WildBlue, and some actual customer… uh… “testimonials” about the quality of service actually received.  Finally, we’ve included the most painful speed test ever encountered.  The original video was silent and some might think it’s actually stuck.  It’s not.  We’ve added some music to spice things up or to increase your pain and suffering.  You might want to get a piece of cake for this. Oh, and one last thing:  If you are using a satellite provider to access Stop the Cap!, forget about the video.  Watching it will eat almost a quarter of your daily usage allowance.  (6 minutes)

Almost two years to the day Frontier Communications quietly introduced language in its customer agreements providing a monthly broadband usage allowance of just 5GB per month, the company has quietly removed that language from its terms and conditions.

The 5GB usage allowance was deemed generous by Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter.  Frontier claimed most of its 559,300 broadband subscribers (2008 numbers) consumed less than 1.5 gigabytes per month.  But news of the cap angered customers anyway, particularly in their biggest service area — Rochester, N.Y.  In fact, Frontier’s usage cap was what sparked the launch of Stop the Cap! in the summer of 2008.

While never universally enforced against the company’s DSL customers, Frontier has used that portion of its acceptable use policy to demand up to $250 a month from some “heavy users” in Mound, Minn.

Frontier’s usage limit language also played a role in a major controversy in April, 2009 when Time Warner Cable planned usage limits of their own for western New York customers already faced with Frontier’s 5GB usage limit.

The phone company used Time Warner’s planned usage cap as a marketing tool to switch to Frontier DSL service.

Frontier used Time Warner Cable's usage cap experiment against them in this ad to attract new customers in the spring of 2009.

This website has pounded Frontier for two years over its continued use of the 5GB language as part of its broadband policies.  We raised the issue with several state regulatory bodies as part of Frontier’s purchase of Verizon landlines in several states.  Several state utility commissions raised the usage cap issue with Frontier as a result, deeming it negative for rural broadband customers who would effectively endure rationed broadband service from a de facto monopoly provider.

We also criticized Frontier for promoting its MyFitv service, little more than a website containing Google ads and embedded videos already available on Hulu, while not bothering to tell its customers use of that service on a regular basis would put them perilously close to their 5GB allowance.

In the end, Frontier itself denied they would strictly enforce the 5GB limit, making its continued presence in the company’s terms and conditions illogical.

Now, the company has returned to the earlier language it formerly used, reserving the right to shut you off if you use the service excessively or abusively.  This resembles similar language from most broadband providers.  While not absolute in defining those terms, Frontier doesn’t commit to a specific number either.  Today’s “generous usage allowance” is tomorrow’s “rationing.”

If Frontier cuts off customers for using only a handful of gigabytes a month, deeming it excessive, we want to know about it.

Stop the Cap! opposes all Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, speed throttles, and so-called “consumption billing.”  We believe such limits retard the growth and potential of broadband service and are unwarranted when considering the ongoing decline in costs to provide the service.  We do not oppose providers dealing with customers who create major problems on their networks, but believe those issues are best settled privately between the company and the individual customer.

Providers must also be honest in recognizing that broadband is a dynamic medium.  They have a responsibility to grow their networks to meet demand, especially at current pricing which provides major financial returns for those offering the service.  We also believe broadband tiers should be limited to speed, not consumption.  Customers with higher data demands will naturally gravitate towards higher-priced, faster-speed tiers, providing higher revenue to offset the minimal costs of moving data back and forth.

Broadband customers will be loyal to the providers that treat them right.  We applaud Frontier Communications for finally removing the last vestiges of its infamous 5GB usage allowance.  Hopefully, going forward, Frontier will spend its time, energy and money improving its broadband service instead of trying to convince customers to use less of it.

Despite some denials last week that Verizon and Google were not married and cohabitating their political agendas, the two giants announced a shared vision of the Internet’s future — one that does not “purposely throttle or block content,” but reserves for themselves a new, super speed Internet for the two companies and their closest corporate friends that will make blocked websites the least of America’s broadband problems.

For Internet enthusiasts, the deal is nothing less than a complete sellout of one of the founding visions of the Internet – content judged on its merits, not on the deep pockets backing it.  It’s a complete betrayal of Net Neutrality and broadband reform by Google, which has some of the deepest pockets around and has apparently forgotten the story of its own founding — a story that would likely be impossible on an Internet envisioned by Big V & G. Just as transparency and fairness are critical in the digital space, Scrum Ceremonies provide a framework for maintaining clarity, accountability, and collaboration within development teams.

The Five Biggest Lies About Google and Verizon’s Net Neutrality Proposal

Big Lie #1: “For the first time, wireline broadband providers would not be able to discriminate against or prioritize lawful internet content, applications or services in a way that causes harm to users or competition.”

That is a distinction no longer worth the difference should the two providers succeed in developing a special fast lane for their content partners.  If you don’t have the admission price or a favored pass to belong to the golden magic superhighway, not being purposely blocked or throttled on a clogged free lane offers little comfort when your start-up cannot compete with the bully boys that can outspend you into submission.

Both companies seek to invest millions in what is essentially a toll highway, incentivized by the potential returns offered by deep pocketed content producers willing to pay the toll.  With Wall Street following that money, those left behind on the slow lanes will find providers increasingly uninterested in throwing good money into necessary upgrades to keep the “free lane” humming.  The Internet that results will resemble the difference between a Chicago public housing project and the Ritz-Carlton.

Big Lie #2: “Reasonable” Network Management

The partnership’s declaration of support for its definition of  “reasonable” traffic management has more loopholes than Lorraine Swiss cheese.  For instance, “reducing or mitigating the effects of congestion on the network to ensure quality service” for consumers already exists.  It’s called “upgrading your network.”  Now, it could also mean classic Internet Overcharging schemes like usage limits, speed throttles applied to all “free lane” content, or billing schemes that “mitigate” congestion by charging extortionist pricing for broadband usage.  Using vague notions of “accepted standards” could be defined by any group deemed by Google and Verizon to be “recognized.”  Both have enough money to influence the very definition of “accepted standards.”

You don’t need a policy that reads like a credit card agreement to manage traffic on a well-managed, consistently upgraded broadband network.  Nothing prevents either company from providing such a network, but with no oversight and pro-consumer reform, nothing compels them to provide it either.

Big Lie #3: This preserves the open Internet.*

(*- excluding wireless broadband access to the Internet.)  As an increasing number of consumers seek to migrate some of their Internet usage to wireless networks, it’s more than a little unsettling Google and Verizon would exempt these networks from most of the “consumer protections” they have on offer.

Big Lie #4: The FCC gets its coveted authority to oversee the Internet.

Not really.  In fact, this agreement shares more in common with corporate interests that want less regulation and oversight, not more.  The suggested framework graciously grants the FCC the right to sit and listen to complaints, but strips away… permanently… any authority to pass judgment on the cases they hear and write regulations to stop abuses.

Clauses like “parties would be encouraged to use non-governmental dispute resolution processes” must give the arbitration industry new hope.  Already out of favor in many quarters, this proposal is tailor-made to bring a new Renaissance for “out of court arbitration” that heavily favors the companies that bind consumers and other aggrieved parties to using it.  The arbitration industry is no stranger to contributing to the right people to make them the only reasonable choice for dispute resolution.

Verizon and Google want nothing less than the right to define how their Internet will work — from the applications you can effectively use, the speed throttle you are forced to endure on the free lane, to the enormous bill you’ll receive for using those non-favored websites.

Big Lie #5: Google in 2006 — “Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can’t pay.”

Google has come a long way, baby — in the wrong direction.  Demanding Google “not be evil,” something hundreds of thousands of Americans have already said today, is becoming so commonplace as to be cliché.  Still, being for Net Neutrality one day and throwing that concept overboard the next is the ultimate flip-flop.  When money talks louder than doing right by the millions of users who made both companies what they are today represents the ultimate betrayal.  Let’s make sure they realize it.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg West Sees Tiered Web Pricing From Google-Verizon Plan 8-9-10.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg News reports consumers will be stuck with higher broadband bills, especially if they dare to watch online video, on a broadband platform envisioned to saddle Americans with toll highways for Internet content.  (4 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Google Joint Internet Policy 8-9-10.flv[/flv]

CNBC echoed concerns about the Verizon-Google deal and its implications for the future of Internet applications.  (4 minutes)

Read the Verizon-Google Proposed Framework below the jump…

… Continue Reading

Verizon and Google have reached an agreement in principle to deal away Net Neutrality protections for American broadband users according to a late report in today’s Washington Post.

Cecilia King writes the agreement is days away from being revealed in public, but two sources verified Verizon and Google have agreed to a split the difference on Net Neutrality — abandoning the open Internet concept for wireless broadband, but protecting against service providers holding bidding auctions over the speed of web content delivery.

Verizon wouldn’t confirm that a deal was struck but said in an e-mail statement:

“We’ve been working with Google for 10 months to reach an agreement on broadband policy. We are currently engaged in and committed to the negotiation process led by the FCC. We are optimistic this process will reach a consensus that can maintain an open Internet and the investment and innovation required to sustain it.”

Specifically, Google and Verizon’s agreement would prevent Verizon from offering paid prioritization to the biggest bidders for capacity on its DSL and fiber networks, according to the sources. But any promises regarding open-Internet access wouldn’t apply to mobile phones, the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the companies have not officially made their announcement.

And Verizon could offer managed services — better quality to some Web sites such as those offering health care services, the sources said. But some analysts speculate that managed services could also include discounted YouTube and other services to FiOS customers at better quality.

Public interest groups, some occasionally accused of being in bed with Google, were outraged at the news.

“The fate of the Internet is too large a matter to be decided by negotiations involving two companies, even companies as big as Verizon and Google, or even the six companies and groups engaged in other discussions at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on similar topics,” said Gigi Sohn, president of public interest group Public Knowledge.

The clear distancing from Google’s settlement illustrates these pro-consumer groups are not simply shilling for Google’s public policy positions.

For Stop the Cap!, the implications are extremely disturbing.  As outlined, this compromise deal would relegate wireless broadband to usage caps, speed throttles, and content blockades indefinitely.  Should “improved quality” service on the wired side be an available option, it could allow the broadband industry to mount a devastating campaign to end would-be competitors, especially to their video businesses.  Cable and phone companies could pick winners and losers (with their products being the winners, and would-be competitors the losers) by prioritizing high quality video services, exempting their partners from Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, and subjecting would-be, “non-preferred” content providers to usage and speed-restricted broadband lines.

Offering preferred content producers discounted rates would also completely change the business models of content distribution and discourage investment in would-be challengers that could provide consumers with other video options.

More importantly, it provides an example of an Obama Administration ruthlessly willing to cut consumers out of the debate about Net Neutrality, while forcing them to live with the results.  King notes the priorities of Google and Verizon don’t exactly include consumers:

According to the sources, Verizon and Google have met separately to reach an agreement they will tout as an example of successful self-regulation. Once bitter opponents in the so-called net neutrality debate, the firms have grown closer on the issue as their business ties have also strengthened. Verizon partners with Google on their Android wireless phones.

Their actions could set a course for the FCC meetings and what ultimately the parties could present to lawmakers, analysts said.

Voluntary self-regulation worked so well with Wall Street banks and the housing market that a disconnected crowd inside the beltway is willing to give it another try with a broadband industry that is already a duopoly for most consumers.  Psychic abilities are not required to guess at the eventual outcome.

Update 12:30pm — The denials are flying over a NY Times piece that claims Google has agreed to pay Verizon’s asking price for prioritized traffic:

Google: “The New York Times is quite simply wrong. We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google traffic. We remain as committed as we always have been to an open internet.”

Verizon: “The NYT article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken. It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose. As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation. To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect.”