Speaking at CeBIT Australia 2010, Alan Noble, engineering director, at Google Australia and New Zealand said Net Neutrality was "tremendously important" and needed both public debate and commitment from the Federal Government.

"Our views are that the network - Internet - needs to be open - open access, devices of your choice, services of your choice... and there probably hasn't been enough discussion about the Net Neutrality issues in Australia yet," he said.

"Discussion has been about the physical infrastructure. I think it would be very unfortunate if we saw a situation develop where it was hard for innovation to flourish because the network was not neutral. If innovators had to seek the permission of the network operator to innovate, that would be a very sad day for Australia."

Dr David Skellern, CEO at National ICT Australia (NICTA) played down the Net Neutrality issue, warning of potential delays in the roll out of the NBN.

"A Layer 2 infrastructure is much more likely to be neutral, and we talk far too much about [Net Neutrality]. Various people have given it a lot of thought, and a lot of the discussion about these sorts of issues will ultimately - if we push them too far - lead to delays," he said.