AT&T plan heightens debate over Net's future

"I think the most passionate Net neutrality advocates probably overstate the extent of the problem today, but at the same time technologies do exist that would enable a broadband (service provider) to take an increasing amount of control over what applications work and what don't," said Laszlo.

"The power of that last mile connection is a very strong one," he said. "There is the capability and increasingly the temptation to to play a more active role in steering your customers toward your partners or content providers who have cut you in for a share of the revenue."

The issue of Net neutrality has attracted the attention of Congress.

The Senate held a hearing on the topic last month, where Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf warned of potentially dire consequences.

"We must preserve neutrality in this system in order to allow new Googles of the world, new Yahoos, the new Amazons, to form," Cerf testified. "We risk losing the Internet as a catalyst for consumer choice, for economic growth, for technological innovation and for global competitiveness," Cerf said.

A top cable industry official responded that government regulation would reduce investment and limit innovation.

"What is really going on here is that companies that started as entrepreneurs and innovators are now so invested in the status quo that they fear not cable or telephone broadband providers, but that next idea, that next search engine that takes off," said Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. "What they're asking you to do is freeze the Internet in place with their position in the marketplace locked in."

Nevertheless Sen. Ted Stevens, the Republican chairman of the Commerce Committee,  said he was generally in favor of Net neutrality, and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden last week introduced a bill that would enshrine the concept in federal law, prompting a Verizon official to say he was trying to "fix a hypothetical problem that doesn't exist."

In the past, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered AT&T and Verizon to adhere to net-neutral principles for at least two years as a condition for allowing them to complete big mergers like the one now being contemplated.

Advocates of Internet openness are hoping for a more permanent solution, and while Wyden's bill is given little chance of passage as a stand-alone measure, they say the concept of neutrality could be written into other telecommunications law. One possibility is that phone companies would agree to keep their lines wide open as a condition for something they highly covet: the right to offer a national television service over their fiber-optic lines rather than negotiate franchise agreements with hundreds of communities individually as the traditional cable operators have had to do.

MORE FROM TECH AND GADGETS

Tech and gadgets Section Front

OMG earthquake! Seismologists monitor tweets Digital zombies? Virtual world trumps physical The death of weddings, as seen on YouTube Picking a photo printer that's right for you Amazon Kindle for iPhone goes international After criticism, Facebook tweaks settings again The decade in personal technology Hollywood hopes ensemble cast boosts Blu-ray High-tech divorce clouds tablet PC's launch Facebook is lactose-intolerant, group says Tech and gadgets Section Front   Add Tech and gadgets headlines to your news reader: