IP Democracy: Ed Whitacre: No Packet Prioritization for Us

AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre spoke this morning at Sanford C. Bernstein and Company’s Strategic Decisions Conference and raised more questions than he answered. Along with the usual optimistic assessment of the company’s future, Whitacre addressed two hot-button topics for AT&T.

The first was the giant telco’s IPTV efforts, known as Project Lightspeed or AT&T U-Verse. Skeptics question whether AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) architecture will deliver enough bandwidth for the long-term. This blueprint allows for the switched channel delivery of content, voice and data services at a typical capacity of 25 Mbps, not enough, some say, for multiple channels of HDTV, very fast broadband and multichannel video, not to mention VoIP.

When pressed on this possible bandwidth limitation, Whitacre said he’s not worried…but offered little else by way of reassurance. He did say that in some spots (and they surely can’t cover wide areas), the FTTN architecture is getting 50 Mbps, enough for every conceivable service. Other than that, Whitacre addressed this critical question by saying “I suspect as this technology moves forward, we will be able to get more and more speed.” He also added “If you have 25, 35, 40 or even 50 Mbps capability, I’m not really worried about that.”

On the other hot-button topic, net neutrality (or as the Sanford analyst questioning Whitacre called it “packet prioritization services for content providers”), the AT&T Chairman was downright confusing. He didn’t say much, but what he did say is a head-scratcher.

Here’s what he said:

We’re not going to do anything to affect the Internet - nothing, zero, no packet prioritization there.

Huh? Is this the same man who said

The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!

What does this mean? Is this just a misstatement? Has AT&T given up on its plans to create “fast lanes” on the Internet? Or was Whitacre just promising not to mess with the Internet as frozen at a given point in time, while something new will happen in the future, like private content connections that don’t have anything to do with the public Internet?

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 31, 2006 8:57 AM to IP Democracy