An AT&T executive sent a memo to employees asking that they and their families contribute to the company's fight against Net Neutrality.
In the memo Senior Executive Vice President James Cicconi urged those participating to hide their company affiliation and use personal email addresses when posting anti-Net Neutrality comments on the OpenInternet.gov website.
Cicconi also provided a list of talking points for those taking part in the action reports SaveTheInternet.com. Among the points:
America's wireless consumers enjoy the broadest range of innovative services and devices, lowest prices, highest usage levels, and most choices in the world. Why disrupt a market that's working so well?
All five points presented by Cicconi can be seen here, but it appears the main post has been edited and Cicconi’s name has been changed.
Tim Carr, Campaign Director for Free Press and author of the piece on SaveTheInternet, took AT&T to task:
By pressuring the company’s employees to pose as average citizens and post AT&T talking points, Cicconi is asking them to be doubly deceptive. Not only are they asked to hide their true identities but also to spread misinformation on behalf of a company that seems to be getting more desperate by the day.
Comments
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
This was on slashdot on Tuesday, linking a washington post article as the source. I guess I consider the washingtonpost mainstream...
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2009/10/att_lobbyist_asks_empl...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/10/20/2043202/ATampT-Suggests-To-300K-...
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
Can't wait for the day when a company decides to roll out free internet (DSL speeds) AT&T is forced to respond or lose customers. They should be happy they have an oligopoly on bandwidth, period. Where do you get a dedicated T1 line? T3? Etc? Somewhere down the line it's either from AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, or another huge telco. They should just shut up and do business better than their competitors. Offer what the market will pay for. Or they will lose money.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
Pretty sure this is a hoax. No mainstream coverage at all, and the "LA Times" link goes to a "You've been RickRoll'd" image.
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Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
Concerns over the validity of this memo aside, I'm curious about this statement:
"America's wireless consumers enjoy the broadest range of innovative services and devices, lowest prices, highest usage levels, and most choices in the world."
Is that even remotely true? I'm fairly certain as 'innovative services and devices' and 'highest usage levels' go, Japan probably trumps the US without question. And as for 'lowest prices', I'm sure that China provides equivilent service for much cheaper.
Granted, there are a lot of reasons WHY this would be the case, but that's not important -- is making a claim like this without substanciation false advertising? Or if it's not a promotion of AT&T specifically, isn't there some avenue of fraud or perjury that should be pursued? I can't help but feel that one of the biggest problems in the American news system these days is that frauds and hucksters rarely have to own up to their falsehoods.
If you make a claim, and a study is brought up that disproves said claim (like say, the dangers of casual marijuana use, the damages incurred by file sharing, or the effectiveness of abstinance only education), shouldn't it be illegal to continue making those (now) false claims? And shouldn't unsubstanciated claims but discouraged in the first place?
Additionally: "Why disrupt a market that's working so well?"
Because it's never bad to throw out 'good' for 'better'.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
In Canada, we get even more screwed. We don't really have anything higher than 10Mb/s connection, and it almost never reach that speed if you have that plan. Most of the time, I only get ~100-200KB/s. Also, we have a bandwidth cap. My plan only goes up to 60GB per month, and have to play $2 extra per GB above bandwidth cap.
But in Europe, there are 100Mb/s connections and even 1Gb/s connections. I heard Korea has the best in the world so I guess they have even higher speeds, or cheaper costs. North American's are really getting ripped off here.
(Please note that I been using to types of measurements in my comment. KB, MB, and GB are all bytes while Kb, Mb, and Gb are all bits. 8 bits = 1 byte)
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
Every word out of their mouths on this issue is a misdirection, a lie, or worse. Why should this be any different?
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
This just sealed the deal. I am no longer going to give business to AT&T, come next pay check I am going to switch to another cell phone provider. A good portion of their employees are under federal investigation over claims of fraud. The investigation is over the employees randomly taking off and adding features to cell phone plans to raise their sales commission. Not to mention they cell your information to third parties that will being to appear on your bill without your information.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
I'm highly to just shut my cell phone off for good over this.
Maybe I should write to them over this since my family is a customer who enjoys their service, but they might just sooner shut our service off for that.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
I'm very tempted to call Bull on this. The forum post "links" to a LA Times article that is really a "RickRoll'd" picture. And the only thing about this on the LA Times is linked to the forum post.
Until I see a version of the original memo or a fact checked interview with the whitle blower I'm just going to assume it's a viral attack to discredit the people against Net Neutrality. And lets be honest, they don't need false discrediting.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
I stand corrected, looks like the AP has picked it up with a deflection/spin from an AT&T rep.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jjuSBgKHPc9yCy77Jdi5Jr...
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
Agreed. So far this is not stacking up and has not been picked up by reputable news sources. Everything I can find links back to the blog posts.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
They used to have a site on the company intranet with a form letter and propaganda about how evil net neutrality is, but I can't recall the address and even if I did, as I said it was an intranet thing not an internet thing.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
Letting the staff know what the "Party Line" is so to speak is drastically different than "suggesting" they get involved.
This situation is trying to paint the company as activaly decieve the government with astroturfing. Like I said before, if I can see an interview with the whistle blower I'll be willing to belive it.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
When they set that thing up they sent around an email that said something to the extent of "Please take a moment and visit this site/get involved" So I wouldn't be surprised if they sent another round of emails. The silver lining is that most employees who don't see "MANDATORY YOU MUST VISIT THIS SITE TO GET YOUR COMMISSION CHECK" won't bother.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
I checked the LA Times website, and there seems to be no such article about AT&T from a search as well, so the mystery deepens...
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
When I worked for AT&T wireless I remember them asking us to fight against net neutrality. Of course, they do need to prioritize calls/packets on wireless networks where there is very limited bandwidth and 911 calls need to be more important than tweets, but that could be done with an exception in the rules and not completely throwing out net neutrality.
BTW, if you want to make the argument "no there is plenty of bandwidth on all wireless networks all the time there is no need for packet prioritization on mobile phone networks" try and use an iPhone during an apple event.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
That's part of the problem to my mind, AT&T are taking something that becomes an issue on occasion, such as periodical high demand on Routers, and the inevitable delay that causes, and, instead of seeing it as a concern that may need several approaches to deal with properly, instead of looking at it as a technological problem, they seem intent on turning it into financial income first.
This always reads to me as a bit like admitting that those problems will always be there, and that AT&T are too busy trying to profit from it to fix it.
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
If you can't win fairly...
Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
Sounds like they should have also asked their employees not to anonymously leak this to the media :-P
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Re: AT&T Exec Drafts Employees to Fight Net Neutrality
Remember kids, don't let a little thing like choice or freedom stifle third quarter profits!
"That's not ironic. That's justice."