AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is so confident that the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) net neutrality rules will be modified that the U.S. telco has no plans to cut its $18 billion network investment budget.
"We think it’s really unlikely these rules stay in place like they are in the long term," he said in an interview with CNBC on Monday.
"This is an industry that is changing really, really fast," he continued. "It’s attracting a lot of investment, and to take an industry like this – moving this quickly – and put it under rules formulated in the 1930s to regulate the black dial telephone, didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to us, and so we have been real clear that we intended to challenge those rules."
Stephenson suggested in November 2014 that AT&T might scale back its investment in high-speed broadband due to the uncertainty the FCC would invite were it to reclassify broadband as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act.
The FCC wrote to AT&T seeking clarification, at which point the telco reaffirmed its plan to deploy fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) in 25 cities, including the 2 million premises pledged as part of its $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV, but put plans to expand the rollout on hold.
The FCC went ahead with Title II reclassification, prompting lawsuits from several telco lobby groups and service providers, AT&T included.
"We’ve been real clear from the beginning that Title II was not probably the best way to regulate this industry," Stephenson said on Monday.
Nonetheless, despite the so-called uncertainty created by Title II reclassification, and the uncertainty created by several lawsuits, the environment is still not quite uncertain enough to persuade AT&T to alter its capex plan. This is because the future of the FCC’s net neutrality rules is uncertain.
"We’re operating and we’re investing under the scenario that these rules will probably be changed," Stephenson said.
"So we’ve said we’re going to invest $18 billion this year. That will allow us to deploy a wireless broadband solution to 13 million homes across the U.S. and 2 million fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) deployments this year. We’re going to stay on track with that."
