AT&T, Free Press Exchange Fire On "What Is the Internet?"
May 7, 2010
| 3:59 PM
The standoff over how to define "the Internet" got a little snarkier Friday when Free Press and AT&T exchanged shots in the ongoing rhetorical battle over whether regulating broadband access providers constitutes "regulating the Internet." It started when Free Press research director Derek Turner called AT&T out for what he saw as the company's inaccurate claim that the said that the FCC is on the brink of doing just that.
"AT&T is wrong on the facts," he said. "Contrary to what AT&T says, the FCC is not proposing to regulate the Internet and in fact has specifically disavowed the possibility. The 'Internet' is not the wires that deliver the content and applications, but the content itself. The FCC is not proposing to regulate CNN.com or hulu.com; it is merely placing light-touch rules of the road on the few powerful incumbents that control the duopoly broadband access market."
AT&T's Vice President of Federal Regulatory Affairs Hank Hultquist returned fire today on the company's blog, announcing "the Derek Turner contest for excellence in nonsensical abstractions." Hultquist holds that Turner's analogy is akin to saying "a swimming pool is not the floor and walls of the structure, but simply the water in it" or "a cannoli is not the pastry tube, but simply the cream inside." Hultquist promised the contest winner an iPad, "which may or may not include WiFi capability. After all, according to Mr. Turner, connectivity is just not part of the Internet."
Turner, for his part, doubted the draw of the prize. "Is it an iPad that operates on AT&T's network?" he asked. "If that's it, I don't want it."
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