AT&T: Premptive Strike On Paid Prioritization Could Hurt Broadband Plans

AT&T continues to make its case for paid prioritization of Internet traffic, saying there is growing consensus on the issue, and has made an appeal to some critics of its position for direct talks.

Prioritization is one of the issues that put a crimp in the Federal Communication Commission's efforts to midwife compromise legislative language among stakeholders, including AT&T, on clarifying the FCC's authority over Internet access service. In a letter to the FCC Sept 15, AT&T outlined areas where it said there was agreement between it and net neutrality regulation backers Open Technology Initiative (OTI) and the Center For Democracy and Technology (CDT) based on letters from OTI and CDT to the commission. There appeared to be lots of them, from AT&T's perspective. But the big difference remains that those groups want a ban on paid prioritization for third-party content on an end user's last-mile connection, while AT&T is strongly opposed to a preemptive ban, invoking national purposes like remote healthcare it says could be thwarted by a preemptive ban.