AT&T today is causing quite a stir among consumer advocates, after the company changed their terms of service (TOS) fine print to (further) restrict streaming and other video services, while exempting their own video services. Robb Topolski, who came to fame by busting Comcast for their packet forgery practices in our forums, appears to have been the first to notice the changes. The text in bold below was added to the agreement:Given their new DSL/3G offer, and the recent problems they've been having with people on 3G-connected laptops getting hammered by overage charges, they've also added additional references to overage fees.

Concerned with the ever-increasing lockdown on the functionality of 3G networks, consumer group Free Press (with which Topolski is affiliated) wrote a new letter (pdf) to the FCC urging them to force wireless carriers to adhere to the FCC's network neutrality principles (pdf). Those principles dictate that consumers have the right to run any device or application on a broadband network, providing it doesn't hurt the network.

The problem has been that these principles are not law, and they're barely even enforceable -- in part because carriers can argue that anything that consumes any amount of bandwidth harms the network, and therefore is subject to reasonable network management. While somewhat useless, companies like Skype have been trying to get these principles applied to wireless networks for some time. The hope of course is that it gives their lawyers a better shot at forcing open carrier networks.

The issue came to the forefront again this week after Skype was released on the iPhone, but only worked via Wi-Fi -- not via AT&T's HSDPA network. AT&T's position on this is an obvious one -- the carrier isn't eager to cannibalize wireless voice minutes. Speaking to USAToday's Leslie Cauley, AT&T's top policy guru Jim Cicconi says AT&T "has every right" to not "facilitate" Skype, given they're a competitor just like Verizon. As a lawyer, you'll note Cicconi chooses his words carefully, suggesting that he's not blocking Skype functionality, he's just not marketing it.

AT&T and Verizon spent the week at CTIA in Las Vegas touting the wonderful world of looming gadgets for 3G/4G networks. While there's a lot of lip service paid to network openness of late, actual moves on this front have been limited. Example one is Verizon's Open Development Initiative, which was announced in 2007 and was supposed to revolutionize the industry, though so far it has been about 95% PR and 5% substance.

Don't expect things to change very quickly. Wireless carriers are currently living the dream: they have exactly the kind of business model in place they only wish was in place on terrestrial networks (not that they're not trying). Their market power allows them to box competitive threats out of the market, be they to voice or content revenue. Meanwhile, low caps have users paying steep overages on top of already very high monthly bandwidth costs, and with the amount of lobbying muscle they have on K-Street, they can pretty much ensure things will stay that way.

It's an interesting battle, because it's so easy to see both sides of the argument when applied to wireless networks.

On one side, shouldn't AT&T be allowed to defend their bread and butter voice revenues from free applications that reduce the price point of voice communications to zero?

On the other hand, shouldn't consumers have the right to use any device and any application on a wireless broadband network, provided it doesn't truly harm the network (egregious bandwidth consumption, malware, spam)?