Little over a week after Verizon Wireless made headlines with its plan to open its network to phones it doesn’t sell, AT&T won applause for apparently following suit, when in fact the company says it is making absolutely no changes to its policy. 

Consumers have long been able to use phones that were not bought from AT&T on its network because the company cannot avoid it, thanks to the GSM technology it uses. But AT&T doesn’t actively encourage the practice and says it warns its customers that it won’t guarantee devices it doesn’t sell will work well. 

Neither is Verizon making any promises about the quality of non-Verizon devices, but it has promised to set up a program to certify and activate any that meet its technical standards.

The subtle difference didn’t stop USA Today from writing a headline about how AT&T was flinging its “cellphone network wide open” in a story based on an interview with the head of its wireless business.Upstart Frontline Wireless followed with an e-mailed statement entitled AT&T/open access claiming ”a big win for our policy argument” and ”a reaction to what Frontline has championed on open access.”

Then, adding icing to AT&T’s cake, Washington experts weighed in. Enter Representative John Dingell, Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees U.S telecommunications regulator Federal Communications Commission.Dingell said in an Dec. 7 e-mail he was “pleased to hear AT&T’s announcement, which continues a consumer-friendly trend of more open wireless networks.”

To his credit Dingell notes that “the devil is in the details” as he urged the company to “implement its policy in a way that maximizes consumer choice.”