Verizon and AT&T Might Refuse TARP Funds

This is slightly old news, but interesting nonetheless.  A week ago I wrote that the strings attached to the broadband TARP funds would likely cause big players to turn down the funding in order to avoid the potentially heavy FCC regulation.  Well, later on that day we received our first signs that this is precisely what’s going to happen.  AT&T and Verizon both hinted that they’re probably not going to accept the hooked funds.  From Open Market:

This reluctance to accept government funding shows that major ISPs realize that acceptance of stimulus funds puts them squarely under the FCC Network Neutrality principles.   These principles could bleed into the other networks—such as Verizon’s FiOS TV or AT&T’s U-Verse—that these large Internet players own.   Meaning this policy would be the camel’s nose under the tent.

Putting aside whether this is good for the public or not, I can’t really blame them.  They need neither the money nor the headache that the stimulus funds carry with them.