Christopher Libertelli leads Skype’s Government Relations team in the US.

Yesterday was a big step forward in the push for net neutrality and mobile openness. I had the pleasure of witnessing an important discussion at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC with Josh Silverman speaking on a panel to outline Skype’s point of view, which simply comes down to this: Consumers should be entitled to greater choice, flexibility and control over the applications they use on their mobile phones.

Mobile openness is a win for individual consumers and for the entire broadband ecosystem. There is only one Internet, and network neutrality principles should be applied allowing for a consistent approach across all the ways consumers access the Internet.

Yesterday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski also spoke at the Brookings Institution to announce his plans for greater mobile openness and net neutrality rules. He proposed two new guidelines:

1. Providers of broadband Internet should not ‘discriminate’ against any lawful Internet content or applications, and should put the choice into the hands of consumers to decide the winners, instead of disfavoring certain applications because they compete in a provider’s market space.
2. Broadband Internet providers should operate with ‘transparency’ and disclose their network management practices to allow people to understand why certain network traffic is being slowed or blocked.

We welcome FCC Chairman Genachowski’s balanced approach and see it as a milestone for innovation policy. If adopted, it will open up more choice and give you ample flexibility to choose applications like Skype. Significant public policy shifts happen in waves. As the pace of change has accelerated in our space and innovation has become more modular (with each new innovation building upon the innovations that have become before it), public policy cycles have likewise quickened in America.

From the Kingsbury Commitment of 1913; to the Divestiture of AT&T, to the 1996 Telecommunications Act; we may well look back at yesterday’s program at Brookings and see Chairman Genachowski’s and Josh Silverman’s presentation as the beginning of the next great shift in telecommunications policy – characterized by a new ‘multi-modal’ model of competition policy that places you at the center of a broadband ecosystem.

The FCC has taken their own open and transparent approach with the launch of a new website, OpenInternet.gov to encourage public participation and comments, so feel free to share what's on your mind. You can also watch a complete video of the event on the Brookings Institution website.

UPDATE: I recently sat down with Washington Post reporter Cecilia Kang for a Q&A about AT&T's recent decision to allow Internet voice services for the iPhone on its network and what that means for the debate on net neutrality.