Whitacre’s comments misconstrued

Despite Web reports to the contrary, AT&T Chairman Edward Whitacre did not change his position on Net neutrality in comments made at an investment conference Wednesday.

In response to a question posed in the Sanford C. Bernstein and Co.’s Strategic Decisions Conference, Whitacre said, “We're not going to do anything to affect the Internet. Nothing. Zero. No packet prioritization there.” Those comments have led some to conclude he was backing off earlier comments about charging content providers more to use more bandwidth to deliver their services.

Whitacre’s remarks to Business Week magazine helped inflame the current Net neutrality debate as Internet groups, consumer organizations and media groups have banded together to ask Congress to pass laws prohibiting service providers from creating tiered services for content providers, saying such action is discriminatory.

According to an event transcript released by AT&T officials today, however, Whitacre’s comments, taken in context, refer to AT&T’s plans for the Internet, not for the tiered services it expects to sell to broadband content providers. In that context, the remarks amount to a reiteration of what Whitacre and executives of other major telcos and cable companies have been saying all along, which is that they will not block access to Internet content by any customer.

Analyst Jeff Halpern asked Whitacre what AT&T planned to do to explain to politicians how the proposed tiered broadband services are not essentially different from today’s virtual private networking options. According to the AT&T transcript, Whitacre responded:

“Well, I don't know. We certainly hope it plays out well. We're doing our part to visit people and help them understand how the network actually works and what packet prioritization, or whatever term you want to put on it, actually works. We're spending a lot of time visiting Congress, demonstrations to people to understand what exactly this means, and you're right, it's not very far from virtual private networking. We're just going to have to continue that education process. And, you know, we've said things like, and continue to say, that we're not going to do anything to affect the Internet. Nothing. Zero. No packet prioritization there. So we're just going to continue to try to educate them, and I believe the level of rhetoric will go down.”