In an address at the Aspen Forum of the Technology Policy Institute in Aspen, Colorado, on Monday, Verizon’s executive Vice President of public affairs, Tom Tauke, hit back at the critics of the recent net neutrality proposal that has been jointly proposed by Verizon and Google.

Saying that the network neutrality issue, or the equal treatment of all Internet traffic, was a situation akin to “the elephant that is still in the room,” Tauke said that the language of the Verizon-Google proposal is “much tougher than any nondiscrimination proposal that had ever been put on the table publicly before.”

Elaborating further, Tauke said that the actual text of the joint proposal, submitted to Washington regulators and politicians, calls for “a new, enforceable prohibition against discriminatory practices” which essentially check wireline broadband providers from prioritizing traffic in a harmful or competition-thwarting manner.

Referring to the criticism of the proposal by special-interest groups – including Free Press, Public Knowledge, and their associates, Tauke said that within a week of the submission of the proposal, these groups started harping on the “long-perpetuated narrative of a two-tiered Internet.” Tauke said that the efforts of these groups were “wrong; dead wrong.”

Further adding that that future services online will include “tele-work, health-care monitoring, smart grids, and smart transportation” etc., Tauke said that these services will require “a different set of rules than the rules that govern the best-efforts Internet.”