On Wednesday, July 29, The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee held a hearing and invited the four largest tech companies to testify. The leaders at Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google were there. Well, they weren’t there, they appeared virtually through video conferencing.

The news outlets that covered the hearing called it the “Big Tech Antitrust Hearing.” We were interested. We watched. Four of the richest men in the world were peppered with questions on a wide range of subjects. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg comes in at number four. It didn’t seem to matter to the seemingly prepared Congressional subcommittee asking the tough questions.

We were interested in the content and the questions. We were more interested in the technical aspects of the live video conference. Because network performance is our business and the whole country had eyes on what was going on in Washington.

From the start there seemed to be evidence of technical issues. The questions came fast and furious. Google. Then Apple. Then Facebook. Then Facebook again. Mark Zuckerberg had answers, but the underlying problem was his video was out of sync with his voice. Jitter. Any business that ever conducted a video conference can relate. It happens all the time. Google and Apple had a few moments of jitter as well.

Through the first section of the hearing we began to wonder why nobody was asking Amazon’s Jeff Bezos any questions. Were they giving him a pass? When the proceedings came to an unanticipated end with the explanation being that one of the men was having “technical difficulties,” we had our answer. Turns out Mr. Bezos was having problems with his video feed.

Cisco’s WebEx Meetings application was being used to facilitate the virtual hearing. Some tech news sites put the onus on them. One had a headline that read “Big Tech’s antitrust hearing was a terrible ad for WebEx [Meetings].”

It’s hard to say if WebEx was responsible for the technical difficulties. If you follow this blog, you know as well as we do that individual Internet connections have everything to do with reliable network performance. And you know that WebEx has no control over Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos’ network performance.

Our biggest takeaway from watching the hearing and seeing the technical issues that occurred is, if this can happen to the Federal government and the biggest tech companies in the world, what chance do the SMBs have of keeping it from happening to them? Your next virtual meeting is every bit as important.

Our advice is to do the best you can to stay on top of your company’s key network performance metrics and address issues before they become problems.