Lorie Wimble
The increasingly public spat on peering and net neutrality continued Friday with a blog post by AT&T Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs Jim Cicconi. “When Netflix delivered its movies by mail, the cost of delivery was included in the price their customer paid. It would’ve been neither right nor legal for Netflix to demand a customer’s neighbors pay the cost of delivering his movie,” says Cicconi, “Yet that’s effectively what Mr. Hastings is demanding here.”
AT&T just turned the high-stakes debate between Netflix and telecommunications companies into a name-calling food fight. AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of Legislative Affairs, James Cicconi, slammed Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, as “arrogant” for his support of stronger net neutrality laws. Earlier this week, Hastings penned a strongly worded post calling for stronger federal support of laws that prevent Internet service providers from charging more for high-bandwidth services. “Netflix believes strong net neutrality is critical, but in the near term we will in cases pay the toll to the powerful ISPs to protect our consumer experience. When we do so, we don’t pay for priority access against competitors, just for interconnection,” he wrote, in relation to the ongoing debate over the future of net neutrality and paid agreements between Netflix and Comcast.
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