SAN JOSE, February 26, 2007–AT&T Senior Vice President Jim Ciconni said Tuesday that the telecommunications world is fundamentally different from 1968, when the FCC required AT&T to allow competing telephones onto its network.
Speaking at the Technology Policy Summit here, Ciconni addressed the recent push for new wireless ‘Net Neutrality rules. “Unlike 1968, we have a pretty vibrant market out there,” he said.
The date refers to the year in which the agency allowed the Carterphone, which connected handheld radio conversations to telephone lines, onto AT&T’s network.
As a result, AT&T would reject any FCC requirement that put such rules in place on wireless carriers.
“In 1968, you had a black phone, a hermetically sealed network and one Bell system,” said Ciconni. “Today, there are a plethora of carriers and a wide variety of devices that are available” on wireless networks.
Most cell phones in the U.S. are sold “locked,” and purchasers are blocked from using them on rival networks, because they are highly subsidized by wireless carriers, Ciconni said.
Most subscribers prefer subsidized phones, Ciconni said. Carriers’ attitudes could change, however, “if there were a groundswell to be able to use any phone on any network. As it stands now, we are simply not seeing it out there.”
Meanwhile, Verizon Communications Executive Vice President Tom Tauke said that his company did not object to municipalities creating government-funded wireless networks that would compete against Verizon’s services.
“If municipalities want to put their tax money into that, wonderful, more power to them,” said Tauke, who joined Ciconni on a policy panel here. “These things take a lot of money, and Wall Street doesn’t reward it at all.” Verizon’s stock has suffered for its heavy investments in high-speed fiber-optic broadband wires.
Both Ciconni and Tauke appeared to endorse some additional engagement by the government in promoting broadband deployment, but differed in their emphasis.
“We don’t have a national broadband policy, we have never had a broadband policy, and, given the importance of competitiveness, we should have one,” said Ciconni.
“A national broadband policy would do more harm than good,” countered Tauke. But he encouraged government-private sector collaboration to obtain more data about broadband deployment.
Tauke referred positively to KetuckyConnect, an effort to compile statistics about regional broadband deployment. The government could provide subsidies and loans for deploying broadband in rural areas that enjoy a lesser degree of broadband deployment, he said.
http://publicintegrity.org/telecom/telecomwatch.aspx?eid=2593
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