Telecoms oppose Net neutrality rules for stimulus money

Representatives from Comcast, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon were in agreement at Thursday's conference, however, that more Net neutrality regulation would do more harm than good.

"I still don't know that there's a problem out there that anyone is citing that compels big government action," said Thomas Tauke, executive vice president for policy at Verizon.

The industry representatives said they were hopeful the Obama administration's interest in expanding broadband access implied a shift in focus from market regulation to market expansion.

"When we talk about Net neutrality, our mind is focused on how we manage scarcity," Tauke said. "Shouldn't our public policy be to create abundance?"

Yet simply adding bandwidth will not accommodate the explosion of Internet activity the industry anticipates, said Robert Quinn, senior vice president for regulatory policy at AT&T.

He said the market needs "cutting edge management techniques in order to handle this explosion of data."

"We need to avoid extensive new regulations in the name of Net neutrality that are going to impede the evolution of these networks and disincent investments of these," he added.