FCC waffles over wireless

Mobile aspects of net neutrality murky

Industry analysis by expert Joanie Wexler, plus links to the day's wireless news headlines

Just prior to the 2010 holiday break, the FCC voted to adopt three basic rules in the hopes of preserving an open Internet. But the agency focused its "net neutrality" order mostly on fixed broadband pipes, leaving rules about operating mobile broadband networks largely up to interpretation.

The FCC's order is intended to prohibit ISPs from engaging in innovation-squelching, discriminatory behavior when they manage their networks; for example, by degrading or blocking applications and traffic that compete with their own services.

Also see: FCC's net neutrality order: The basics 

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Just prior to the 2010 holiday break, the FCC voted to adopt three basic rules in the hopes of preserving an open Internet. But the agency focused its "net neutrality" order mostly on fixed broadband pipes, leaving rules about operating mobile broadband networks largely up to interpretation.

The FCC's order is intended to prohibit ISPs from engaging in innovation-squelching, discriminatory behavior when they manage their networks; for example, by degrading or blocking applications and traffic that compete with their own services.

Also see: FCC's net neutrality order: The basics 

Only the first of the following three primary tenets of the FCC's net neutrality order firmly apply to wireless networks:

1) Transparency; network operators must disclose their network management practices.
2) Operators are prohibited from blocking access to legal Web sites and applications.
3) Operators are prohibited from unreasonable discrimination among content and content providers.

"There's an overall sense that wireless was not well protected," says Andrew Brown, a partner at Levine, Blaszak, Block & Boothby, LLP, a law firm specializing in telecom regulatory and policy matters in Washington, D.C.

Transparency of network management practices applies to fixed and wireless operators alike, he says, but when you get to the no-blocking and discrimination rules, "things get murkier."

For instance, the FCC order does preclude mobile operators from blocking voice and video applications and services that compete with their own, such as Skype, and blocking access to lawful Web sites. But it's unclear whether mobile operators can disallow applications that don't directly compete with their core services.

Mobile operators are allowed to pick and choose what goes into their own app stores; it's not expressly stated whether they could block apps that compete with those created by third parties but sold in their own app stores.

Another question mark is over "pay for prioritization" rules. The FCC order seems to discourage the idea of deep-pocketed content providers paying network operators for prioritization of their own traffic. Such a situation could quickly run even the most innovative newcomers out of town if their traffic were to consistently take a back seat to that of big established providers with an ability to pay.

The FCC order states that "pay for priority will be unlikely to satisfy the no unreasonable discrimination" rule, yet doesn't expressly prohibit it.

By way of explanation, the order says that because mobile broadband is newer and still evolving, the FCC is taking "measured steps at this time to protect the openness of the Internet when accessed through mobile broadband."

Read more about wireless & mobile in Network World's Wireless & Mobile section.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.