Doubtless everyone has heard that the FCC approved the merger of Bellsouth with AT&T, and AT&T has moved ahead with accomplishing that, with various implications for cellphone carrier branding, repatriating jobs that are outsourced, etc.

Some of the provisions are interesting, for example, for a year starting summer 2007 AT&T will give out a free DSL modem to anyone willing to switch from dialup to DSL. On the one hand it’s good to see some U.S. carrier finally doing what Softbank did five or more years ago in Japan. On the other hand, without dialup, you have even less choices than you did before for ISPs.

But what does it mean for net neutrality? Ars Technica thinks it’s good, because of last-minute net neutrality concessions from the corporate merger candidates, and quotes a prominent net neutrality backer:

Professor Tim Wu, writing for Savetheinternet.com, praises the neutrality provisions, but he does note that they are not total. "The agreement does not prevent AT&T from treating different media carried on the Internet differently," he says, "so long as the carrier does not discriminate between who is providing the content. AT&T, under this agreement, may speed all the Internet video traffic on its network (to compete, for example, with cable). But it cannot pick and choose whose video traffic to speed up. In short, AT&T must treat like traffic alike– that is the essence of the agreement."

AT&T agrees to strong network-neutrality provisions, by Nate Anderson, 29 Dec 2006

Prof. Wu also notes that these provisions don’t apply to AT&T’s longhaul IP infrastructure (only to its first and last mile infrastructure); they don’t apply to IPTV; and they only last for two years or until Congress passes a net neutrality act.

And one of those exceptions could be a big loophole.