Yesterday AT&T received a significant amount of media attention for a announcing that they would be unblocking the Sling player for the iPhone so it worked over AT&T's 3G network. In their press release, AT&T proclaimed that Sling "was willing to work with us to revise the app so it was more bandwidth sensitive," adding that Sling "made important changes to more efficiently use 3G network bandwidth and conserve wireless spectrum so that we were able to support the app on our 3G mobile broadband network." Except, to hear Sling tell it, they didn't change a damn thing:So, what changed? Well, the FCC is busy trying to craft network neutrality guidelines, and AT&T may have thought that blocking the bandwidth intensive Sling player while allowing content from equally-bandwidth-intensive (but paid partner) apps might raise regulatory hackles. AT&T has also been long-rumored to be working on a place-shifting service that allows iPhone users to view U-Verse content from anywhere, which would obviously compete directly with the Sling Player application.

Either way, approval is approval. But AT&T's claim that they engaged in non-existent collaboration with Sling is still curious.