For a More Open Society, Keep the Internet Neutral

Metering Traffic or Filtering Speech Would Throttle Democracy and Innovation

Why would someone who spent much of his career working for a multinational telecommunications company care so much about preserving “net neutrality?”

That someone would be me. I worked for Vodafone, the British telecom giant that serves Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania, while living in both London and The Hague. I went on to work with young technology companies, then at the U.S. State Department, and eventually to teach at UCLA Anderson School of Management.

At the State Department, I held a role as U.S. ambassador negotiating the 2012 telecom and …