Rival ISPs’ legal teams will probably pull their hair out when they see what Sprint just did to their arguments against net neutrality. Speaking with Reuters, Sprint CTO Stephen Bye says that not only will the FCC’s net neutrality plan not affect his company’s network investment plans but he also goes so far as to say net neutrality is a positive for Sprint’s customers.
FROM EARLIER: Sprint just stuck a dagger into AT&T’s net neutrality argument
“It’s one of those topics that is highly charged, highly politicized and we took a step back and said it works in the interest of our customers, our consumers and the industry and we frankly found some of the arguments (of our competitors) to be less than compelling,” he tells Reuters, and he specifically singles out carriers’ high-pitched screams that they’d stop investing in network upgrades if the FCC reclassified them under Title II.
“Our competitors are going to continue to invest so they are representing a situation that won’t play out,” he says.
In the past we’ve marveled at how ISPs have claimed that the FCC’s threatened net neutrality rules are destroying their incentive to invest in upgrades despite the fact that they’re still pumping record cash into FCC spectrum auctions. It’s interesting that Sprint has decided to stick a knife into this particular talking point, although we imagine that public policy attorneys at Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T don’t feel quite the same way.
