While Verizon and Comcast have already struck new controversial direct interconnection deals with Netflix (with not much to see for it on Verizon's side yet), Netflix is supposedly still in negotiations with AT&T over a similar deal. Last week Verizon and Netflix spent most of the week verbally sparring in the media, and now it's apparently AT&T's turn. Speaking to the press, AT&T's top lobbyist Jim Cicconi accused Netflix of double talk:

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When a reporter pointed out that Netflix keeps complaining about the deals, Cicconi brushed the objections aside."Then why on Earth would they have agreed to them? I think that's double-talk," he added. "No company that's in a for-profit business is going to act against its economic interests. Sure, any company would like to pay zero for services they need to deliver their business, but that's not a practical approach."

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Netflix and transit operators like Cogent and Level 3 claim ISPs have been intentionally letting transit links saturate to create a new revenue stream, kill the idea of settlement free peering, and extract the kind of "troll toll" on content companies these same exact ISPs have publicly and loudly been dreaming about for more than a decade. Netflix says they struck the deals only because the alternative was awful performance for their subscribers.

AT&T's rhetoric isn't particularly new; a cornerstone of the ISP side of the argument (and in fact it's what truly began the net neutrality debate in the first place long before these interconnection issues popped up) is that Netflix just wants "a free ride" over ISP pipes, even though Netflix pays for bandwidth and transit, and it's paying ISP customers demanding the traffic.