At the official XOHM launch event today in Baltimore, execs worked hard to try to backpedal on the net-neutrality issue, without getting rid of their "we can throttle you whenever" clause.

First, XOHM president Barry West said, "In the event that we end up with a congested spot on the network, we have to manage that congestion in the fairest way. This happens in every mobile network ... [throttling] is not the way we're behaving, it's certainly not our intention, but you have to put in the language to have legal cover."

Later, XOHM senior vice president Atish Gude elaborated. The big fear in the techie community, of course, is that XOHM will choose to cut off services like voice-over-IP and peer-to-peer file transfers. He flatly said they won't cut anyone off, and won't judge people by the kind of traffic they're running, only about their effect on other users' bandwidth.

"In a period of no congestion, we are not going to take any actions against anybody, any time. The few users who have the ability to be road hogs will have to be adjusted; it's just throttling in such a way that everybody has enough highway lanes. It's not targeted at all; it's not targeted at any application, at any protocol, or at any group of users."