I'm here sitting at the Tech Policy Summit at the beautiful Dolce Hayes Mansion in San Jose. The Summit was created to offer an independent, non partisan forum to examine and discuss policy issues impacting technology innovation and adoption. This morning Walt Mossberg cornered AT&T's Sr. EVP of External and legislative affairs, James Cicconi over net neutrality and the sour state of broadband in the US. "Countries like Japan, Korea, Scandinavia and God, yes God, France have better broadband than in the US [...] It's pathetic compared to overseas", said the Wall Street Journal reporter.

AT&T on Net neutrality Defining net neutrality is in the eye of the beholder. AT&T ahve promised that it won't prevent access to web sites, degrade quality on sites that have not opted for higher service level agreements or prevent anyone to connect voice-over-IP devices to the operator's network. Although AT&T has a large IP backbone, it's only carrying 18% of the world's IP backbone traffic. Finally, IP traffic might double in the next couple years because of the surge of HD video transmitted over the Internet. "Video is 1000 times the size of email".
AT&T and the lack of "real" broadband in the US Excuses, excuses... for the operator, the US lacks decent nationwide broadband because of the country's dispersed population, the lack of a broadband policy and the obligation for an operator to connect the rural population as well as urban areas.
AT&T, Microsoft patent case "This case is about the amount of damages for their [Microsoft's] misappropriation of the technology [speech decoding technology]".

PS
Some links to blogs also covering the Summit:
- The official blog
-The 463
-ZDnet