AT&T’s streaming video service HBO Max is at a huge disadvantage to tech companies in the streaming video market says AT&T CEO, John Stankey.

“There’s no doubt that we really should be focused on equality of access from the edge providers and those that are owning operating systems or have incredibly powerful platforms that have aggregated huge amounts of the customer base,” said AT&T CEO John Stankey. “Our focus needs to be on equity of rules and engagement to ensure that anybody who wants to innovate can take these platforms that have over 50% of share in many instances and everybody can equally get out to it.”

John Stankey, CEO of AT&T, Inc. says that the focus should be on edge providers now. He chuckles about the huge amount of debate that went into the net neutrality debate:

I certainly hope it’s a sustainable model. I’m trying to remember when we were last a gatekeeper… it’s been a long time. If I think about what happens moving forward right now and the dynamic there’s no doubt that we really should be focused on equality of access from the edge providers and those that are owning operating systems or have incredibly powerful platforms that have aggregated huge amounts of the customer base. I chuckle and I think back about all the calories that were expended over something like net neutrality.

When you look at this moment we’ve come through where networks have been absolutely so critical moving through this pandemic there has not been a single instance of somebody talking about my network provider blocking me or preventing me from doing what I wanted to do. In fact, the policy that’s in place has allowed for remarkably scaled broadband networks to perform incredibly well. That’s a bit different than what we’ve seen in other parts of the world.

Where the bottlenecks are sometimes occurring are in these commercial agreements and dynamics that are happening between say an Amazon Fire distribution platform or to what’s happening in IoS and maybe a gaming player on it. Our focus probably needs to be on equity of rules and engagement to ensure that anybody who wants to innovate can take these platforms that have over 50% of share in many instances and everybody can equally get out to it. This is a debate about the Edge, not a debate about network neutrality, which we are going to have to be mindful of.