IETF Has Taken No Position On AT&T Prioritization Assertions

Public interest groups including Free Press and Public Knowledge have called on AT&T to retract a letter to the FCC that said the Internet standards-setting body IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) had "fully contemplated" paid prioritization, with the groups saying IETF disputed that assertion. But Russ Housely, chairman of the IETF, says that is not the case, though he said he personally thinks AT&T has "jumbled some things together."

The call for a retraction came after Housely told the National Journal that the AT&T letter was misleading. But Housely says he was speaking for himself, not IETF. "I want to be clear that I was speaking as an individual when I spoke to reporters last Friday," he told the magazine in an e-mail. "The [public interest group] press release says: 'The IETF, however, disputes AT&T's claims.' The IETF has not taken any consensus position on this matter," he said, adding in a follow-up e-mail: "[T]he IETF produces technical specification for the Internet. The IETF does not make statements about prices for network services." Housely says the "jumble" comes from the meaning of "paid prioritization. "[I]t is clear to me that the term "paid prioritization" does not have the same meaning to all readers," he said. "If you read the AT&T letter with one definition in your head, then you get one overall message, and if you read the letter with the other in your head, then you get a different overall message. I tried to make this point."

Housely said AT&T in its letter makes "many correct points" -- he did not specify which they were -- but that it also "jumbles some things together." "[I]n my opinion, a reader will get a distorted impression from the parts of the letter where things get jumbled," he said. The problem, Housely says, is that the IETF specification at issue is not about "prioritization," but about quality of service.