AT&T's New Year's Gift To Yahoo! (GOOG)(TWX)(BLS)(T)(YHOO)(MSFT)

Tis the season. While AT&T got its massive merger with BellSouth cleared by the FCC, it had to promise "net neutrality" for a time. In other words, it cannot charge websites that are bandwidth hogs because of their large numbers of users and the nature of their content more than some plain vanilla website in Akron.

The net neutrality provision is good for two years. What happens then is anyone guess.

But, what might have happened. AT&T may well have tried to get tens of millions of dollars from big websites with rich content. High on the list would me Microsoft’s MSN, Time Warner’s AOL, Yahoo! and Google. News Corp’s MySpace would also have potentially faced tolls for its use of AT&T internet pipes as a conduit to consumers.

With its operating profit running about $200 million a quarter, the decision by AT&T to pass on charging big websites for traffic could actually save Yahoo! some real cake. With current Wall St. estimates of $.13 for the next quarter and the same for Q1 07, could the waiver of charging fees be worth a penny a quarter? Maybe.

If so, Yahoo! got a gift. And, if it helps the market’s perceptions of its future cost base, that might be worth a little on the old stock price.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.