AT&T employees asked to turn lobbyist over net neutrality
An AT&T executive has asked the firm’s employees to contact the Federal Communication Commission and argue against its plans to enforce net neutrality. The request controversially suggests staff members to use personal e-mail addresses when making the arguments.
The letter, from Jim Cicconi (who is in charge of “external and legislative affairs” at the company) asks employees to post messages on the FCC blogs calling for it to vote against proposals to enforce net neutrality. That’s the principle that carriers should treat all types of Internet traffic legally.
What’s said to be an extract from the letter has been posted online. It contains five points employees can make in their post, which are (summarized):
- The U.S. wireless market is the world’s most competitive and doesn’t need regulation.
- That competition is already driving innovation at a rapid pace.
- Networks need to be “managed” to preserve services such as telemedicine.
- Net neutrality rules would deter internet carriers from investing and thus slow down the expansion of broadband.
- Any new rules should apply equally to websites rather than just internet carriers.
Naturally those points have been challenged by those supporting net neutrality enforcement. But what’s really ticked them off is that the letter reportedly suggests that AT&T employees use a personal e-mail address on their post.
Tim Karr of Free Press has accused AT&T of “astroturfing”. That’s a colorful metaphor meaning that the firm is trying to falsely create the illusion of grass-roots support by having it appear that the employees are writing in a purely personal capacity and haven’t been encouraged to do so.
An AT&T spokesman said staff weren’t being forced to make the posts and that the letter was merely for information: “If they use their company e-mail [in their posts] that is fine, too. It was not a mandatory business request.”
Related Posts:
October 21st, 2009
My, oh, my, is the mighty feeling desparate now?
October 22nd, 2009
1. If the wireless market was actually competitive, AT&T would have taken measures to keep up with the growing demands of the handsets they sold. Instead they chose to screw the customers via lost calls etc. while pocketing the profits. They also blame the customers and the devices and refuse to take responsibility for not adding capacity in accordance with the added users.
2. Irrelevant WRT net neutrality.
3. Networks need to be managed but they need to be managed by adding capacity, not strangling the use of the existing capacity.
4. 100% wrong. Internet carriers would either slow _everything_ down as capacity maxes out or, in an effort to be competitive would add capacity and keep customers from jumping ship to companies that actually gave a crap about their customer base (AT&T obviously doesn’t).
5. Agreed in principle, but this is not really a big part of what netneut is all about.
AT&T is again revealing themselves to be anti-competition and anti-consumer. Really, it’s a wonder people people put up with their behavior. No device is worth that.