AT&T Rewrites History, Claims Killing Net Neutrality Will Provide 'Enormous Benefits'

In a blog post, AT&T lobbyist Bob Quinn tried to argue that the immense criticism being levied at the Federal Communications Commission for its decision to scrap net neutrality is based largely on “misinformation” and “rhetorical excess.”  "We will not block websites, we will not throttle or degrade internet traffic based on content, and we will not unfairly discriminate in our treatment of internet traffic (all consistent with the rules that were adopted—and that we supported—in 2010, and the rules in place today.)”

Ignored by Quinn is the fact that the FCC’s 2010 rules were, quite by design, utterly toothless. The rules, co-written at the time by AT&T, Verizon, and Google, had so many loopholes as to be effectively meaningless, letting large ISPs engage in pretty much any and every anti-competitive behavior, provided they vaguely implied it was for the health and security of the network. The rules were so inadequate, they failed to cover wireless networks whatsoever. Quinn also ignores that as consumers and competitors grew wise to bad ISP behavior on the net neutrality front, ISP efforts simply evolved to become more creative. 

ISP lobbyists are building a future where neither competition nor adult regulatory supervision prevents giant ISPs from abusing a clearly broken market. AT&T’s claim that things will somehow magically get better by gutting consumer protections with broad bipartisan support is completely detached from both reality and the historical record.