Verizon’s Tom Tauke did his best on May 25 to assuage our worries about the whole confusing “network neutrality” issue: Verizon, he assures us, won’t mess with its customers’ ability to go anywhere on the Internet.

In fact, Tauke says, there is a ton of extra space on the fiber optics lines Verizon is putting into homes so customers can have fast and reliable access not just to the Internet, but also to other cool services, like video and private health networks. Let’s call that part the Othernet.

But when it comes to the Internet, Tauke sounded reassuring. His company, he told the Senate Commerce Committee, has no interest in discriminating against any content providers. Indeed, he said: “Consumers should have access to any Web site they want to get to, with the capacity that they purchased for that access, and we don’t think there should be any blocking, degrading or any other attempt to in any way interfere with the consumer’s access to any Web site.”

He even added that, should lawmakers want that vow put into law, “we’d be delighted to work with you on that.”

Tauke’s apparent generosity was quite a contrast to comments last fall by Ed Whitacre, chairman of then-SBC (now AT&T) to Business Week. Of Google and other Web content providers, he said: “What they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we want a return on it. . . . Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?”

So what’s the difference between the Verizon and SBC positions? In truth, not much. Tauke, an affable Iowan and former House member, may be smoother than Whitacre, and Verizon more politically savvy. But the two telcos are saying the same thing: They want to offer many levels of Web-based services, with varying levels of speed and reliability.

It all depends on what your definition of the word “Internet” is. Whitacre’s AT&T argues that all its fiber-based services, including TV, use Internet protocols. It embraces this definition to support its contention that it doesn’t need to secure local video franchises, as its cable rivals must. Verizon, though, shrewdly submits to video franchise regulation (while lobbying for streamlining the process), which allows it to distinguish its video offerings from its broadband Internet service — even though both come over the same fiber pipe.

Tauke, therefore, can promise an “open” Internet service, while at the same time allowing for “closed” services such as video and so-called virtual private networks over the same fiber. A promo for Verizon’s new FiOS TV service in Tampa, for example, barely mentions that you also can use FiOS for supercharged Internet access.

“In the network we’re providing, we have one path that goes video, we have one path that goes Internet access, we have another path that will have virtual private networks, and there are more paths that can be created with new lasers on this fiber,” Tauke told the senators.

Fiber optics, he points out, don’t provide just one information superhighway, but rather “10 decks, each with 100 lanes, with the capability to easily add more lanes as necessary.”

So, when people talk of ensuring an open, non-discriminatory Internet, which lane are they talking about? Or do they mean every lane? If so, that would relegate broadband providers to building and managing only the conduit, barring them from controlling content.

That latter approach is what most Bell critics would prefer — at least until there are more choices for broadband service than just the local phone or cable monopoly. The telcos built their networks, after all, along rights of way granted when they were all part of the old Ma Bell.

In any case, if fiber capacity is so unlimited, wouldn’t it be in consumers’ interest to require these incumbent broadband providers to lease capacity on their Othernets to rivals who could establish competing Internet, video or other services? Some academics say yes. That approach, of course, was tried in the 1996 telecom law, which required local phone companies to lease their lines to other companies to stimulate local phone competition (in exchange, they could offer video and other services). The Federal Communications Commission got rid of most of those sharing rules, after lengthy fights by the Bells.

Having successfully prevented competitors from sharing its copper lines, Verizon knows Congress and the FCC are hardly likely to require that it share its newer big investment in fiber optics.

Which is precisely what Verizon and the other Bells planned for all along. The arrival of the Internet into the mainstream in 1995, after all, was an unexpected intrusion into their plans to build a fiber network to compete against cable in the video business. “The Bell companies are willing to pay for transforming the nation’s network of copper wires into fiber optics,” I wrote here in 1992, “But only if they are allowed by Congress and the president to carry video programming. . . .”

Now, 14 years later, the Bells have merged back together, and their fiber networks are taking shape. Verizon now assures us that the “Internet” will remain open to all providers (at speeds and capacities to be determined by Verizon). As for the rest of that fiber pipe into your house? That’s the Othernet. And, like a cable operator, Verizon will have complete control over what content will ride on it.

Mike Mills is CQ’s executive editor for electronic publishing.