Genachowski, speaking at the Washington office of , declined to comment directly on the AT&T dustup save to say that it highlights the original rationale for the net neutrality order.

"We're going to continue to have disputes and issues that arise under [the] open Internet framework. This is one that could very well come before us in a formal way, so I shouldn't comment on it specifically," he said, expressing his preference that industry players resolve such disputes through multi-stakeholder forums common to the evolution of the Internet. But when positions are intractable, he said, the FCC needs to step in and weigh the facts to determine if a violation took place.

"We adopted the open Internet rules because that doesn't always lead to success. And sometimes good faith efforts don't resolve things," he said.

Genachowski's larger message was that through the joint work of the public and private sectors, the country must redouble its efforts to achieve high-speed, high-capacity, ubiquitous broadband, reinforcing the policy direction the FCC has adopted since he took the reins in 2009.

Those efforts have produced a national broadband plan outlining a goal of delivering service with speeds of 100 megabits per second to 100 million households by 2020, as well as initiatives to free up more spectrum for wireless networks and revamp a federal telecom subsidy to support broadband.