AT&T Claims Restricting Paid Prioritisation Harmful to Net Neutrality

Paid prioritisation – the ability to set higher prices for certain types of Internet service – and its impact on net neutrality has long been in debate. Now, with the recent ruling by a federal appeals court against FCC interference, the debate is raging louder; with Free Press and AT&T standing on opposite ends of the issue.

First Free Press

This newest debate began when Free Press, a pro-regulatory advocacy group, sent two letters to the FCC stating that paid prioritisation was “discriminatory” and would “only benefit the few content giants that have deep enough pockets to pay for favourable treatment.” According to them, allowing paid prioritisation completely undermines the concept of net neutrality.

Now AT&T

AT&T begs to differ. In a statement made yesterday, they assert that a net neutrality plan restricting paid prioritisation goes against Internet ideologies. They say telecommunications companies must be allowed to set prices according to service and claim that they are already doing so, with AT&T business customers paying extra for premium services like real-time voice communication and financial transactions.

Who is Right?

According to AT&T, Free Press’ position results in average consumers being charged more in order to fund the broadband infrastructure needed to support all applications equally. According to Free Press, AT&T’s position allows for abuse by prioritising certain applications over others, thus giving the video conference customer precedence over the online shopper.

“[Differentiating services] was not designed to be a tool to allow the network provider to drive application-level discrimination,” Free Press says. The organisation plans to send another letter to the FCC today.