AT & T Is joining the fight for net neutrality while it fights to kill the current rules
In ads, AT&T will stress it supports an open internet, just not the U.S. government’s current rules for enforcing it.
https://www.recode.net/2017/7/11/15952896/att-net-neutrality-day-of-action-fcc
When Amazon, Facebook, Google and a chorus of startups and activists commence a massive online protest Wednesday to defend net neutrality, they’ll be joined by a company they don’t exactly believe is on their side: AT&T.
The wireless giant says it’s participating in the tech industry’s so-called “day of action,” stressing in a blog post that it believes in “preserving and advancing an open internet” — even though AT&T long has disagreed with staunch net neutrality advocates over how to enforce it.
Tech giants and consumer groups plan to rally Wednesday in support of rules implemented under the Obama administration that subject internet providers, like AT&T, Charter, Comcast* and Verizon, to utility-like regulation.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission under the leadership of its new Republican chairman, Ajit Pai, has sought to scrap those rules, arguing they are too heavy-handed.
Pai has the support of AT&T, which previously joined its counterparts in the telecom industry in suing the FCC — unsuccessfully — to quash the government’s existing net neutrality rules. ....................But AT&T insisted its legal qualms with the FCC’s current regulations shouldn’t diminish the fact it believes in the principle of an open internet.