Mark Cuban owns an NBA team, but his varied interests extend far beyond the basketball world.
The Dallas Mavericks owner has spoken his mind on a variety of subjects, from MLB’s 2013 suspension of Alex Rodriguez to racism in America. On Monday, he turned his focus to another hot topic — net neutrality.
The idea behind net neutrality is that the U.S. government and Internet service providers should treat all data on the Internet the same, rather than discriminately charge content providers based on factors such as site, platform, application, etc.
So what’s Cuban’s take on the issue? In an interview with the Washington Post, he argued that adopting net neutrality could stifle innovation and deny bandwidth to applications that need it the most.
“I want there to be fast lanes because there will be applications that need fast lanes,” Cuban told the Washington Post’s Nancy Scala. “I want certain medical apps that need the Internet to be able to get the bandwidth they need. There will be apps that doctors will carry on 5G networks that allow them to get live video from accident scenes and provide guidance. There will be machine vision apps that usage huge amounts of bandwidth. I want them to have fast lanes.”
Cuban clearly is passionate about the topic of Internet freedom, and for good reason. Before buying the Mavericks in 2000, Cuban and a former college classmate launched an Internet radio website called AudioNet, which morphed into Broadcast.com and eventually sold to Yahoo! in 1999 for $5.7 billion.
“The real issue is that there will be many applications that we can’t foresee today,” Cuban added. “(And) we need those applications to not just have priority, but guaranteed quality of service.”
Thumbnail photo via Jerome Miron/USA TODAY Sports Images
