AT&T Senior VP Bob Quinn says his company has avoided offering some new services because of worries about violating net neutrality rules. Quinn, head of the telco's federal regulatory division, provided little detail on what kinds of services AT&T might offer if not for the rules issued by the Federal Communications Commission this year. “Since the Open Internet Order came out we've had weekly calls with the business units and literally 15 lawyers who are all trying to figure out whether that stuff we've invested in... would be a violation of the order," he said at the Phoenix Center's Annual US Telecoms Symposium yesterday, according to Politico. "We've had to shelve a bunch of stuff because we've got to wait and see.”

AT&T has "paused plans to offer some new services" because of legal uncertainty, Politico wrote. While Quinn was apparently light on detail here, he said that AT&T didn't want to be the first carrier to offer something similar to T-Mobile's new Binge On video streaming program because it wasn't clear how the FCC would respond.

AT&T's claim that it will pause offering new services is reminiscent of its statement a year ago that it would "pause" investments in fiber networks because of net neutrality rules. But after the rules were approved, AT&T continued expanding fiber and agreed to deploy fiber to 12.5 million potential customers.

Despite net neutrality, AT&T is already zero rating

With Binge On, T-Mobile exempts certain video services from its data caps, a practice known as zero-rating, while downgrading video resolution to 480p so that it uses less data. Customers can turn the feature off, and third-party companies don't have to pay T-Mobile to have their services exempted from data caps. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has already called T-Mobile's form of zero-rating "pro-competition" and "pro-innovation."

The FCC rules passed in February prevent Internet providers from blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment. There is no outright ban on zero-rating, but the FCC can step in to prevent specific offerings if they "unreasonably interfere" with the ability of consumers to reach content or the ability of content providers to reach consumers. Critics of zero-rating say the schemes harm Web services that aren't exempt from data caps.

AT&T has been zero rating content since before T-Mobile unveiled Binge On, with a Sponsored Data program unveiled in January 2014, shortly before a court struck down a previous version of the FCC's net neutrality rules. The FCC subsequently re-instituted net neutrality rules using a different legal justification, but AT&T has continued offering Sponsored Data without interference.

AT&T and other broadband providers sued the FCC to overturn the new rules, and oral arguments in the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, are scheduled for Friday this week.

Under AT&T's Sponsored Data, advertisers and other companies have been paying the carrier for exemptions from mobile data caps. Potential expansions of AT&T zero-rating were scrutinized when the company sought FCC approval of its purchase of DirecTV. Consumer advocacy groups asked the FCC to impose a merger condition preventing AT&T from exempting video services from data caps, to AT&T's chagrin.

Ultimately, the FCC approved the AT&T/DirecTV merger, while barring AT&T from exempting its own online video services from home Internet data caps. The FCC justified the restriction by saying that AT&T's purchase of DirecTV increased its incentive to limit consumers' access to online video products by applying data caps in discriminatory fashion.