AT&T: we're innovating way too fast for regulation!

[Commentary] AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson claims his business just moves too fast for government regulation.

"We're obsolescing technology in 7, 8 year curves right now in this part of the industry. And how do you come in and impose regulations on something that is moving that quick, with volumes growing at that kind pace? The business models are still in flux. Whatever regulation you put in, 12 months from now will look silly... This industry is changing so fast it will make [new regulations] look silly five years from now, I believe."

This is a bit rich. For one thing, Stephenson himself references the government-backed principles that have regulated telephone companies for 70 years, despite being drafted in an age before wireless phones, fax machines, and answering machines. Principles, if constructed at suitable levels of generality, aren't necessarily outmoded by technological developments (though detailed implementation rules do run into this problem). It's hard to see how broad ideas about nondiscrimination, transparency, and allowing access to any legal device would become meaningless when AT&T rolls out faster wireless data connections. In fact, technical developments seem most likely to make the bandwidth challenges posed by things like online video go away rather than the reverse.