AT&T announced last week that FaceTime over cellular will only be available to customers who sign up for a new Mobile Share plan. Here's why AT&T says their plan doesn't run afoul of net neutrality laws.
With iOS 6, Apple’s FaceTime will for the first time be available over 3G.
Sounds great, right?
Well, as things typically go, FaceTime over 3G is subject to carrier approval and if you happen to be an AT&T user who likes to FaceTime, you better have a readily available Wi-Fi access point.
AT&T announced last week that FaceTime over cellular will only be available to customers who sign up for a new Mobile Share plan.
AT&T will offer FaceTime over Cellular as an added benefit of our new Mobile Share data plans, which were created to meet customers’ growing data needs at a great value. With Mobile Share, the more data you use, the more you save. FaceTime will continue to be available over Wi-Fi for all our customers.
AT&T’s announcement drew a lot of ire from folks claiming that the decision ran afoul of net neutrality laws. Naturally, AT&T wasn’t too thrilled with the negative publicity and this morning posted a press release, drawn up by Bob Quinn – AT&T’s Senior VP of Federal Regulations – explaining their position.
Quinn sets out to explain why AT&T’s decision regarding FaceTime is completely legit:
Providers of mobile broadband Internet access service are subject to two net neutrality requirements: (1) a transparency requirement pursuant to which they must disclose accurate information regarding the network management practices, performance, and commercial terms of their broadband Internet access services; and (2) a no-blocking requirement under which they are prohibited, subject to reasonable network management, from blocking applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services.
AT&T’s plans for FaceTime will not violate either requirement. Our policies regarding FaceTime will be fully transparent to all consumers, and no one has argued to the contrary. There is no transparency issue here.
Nor is there a blocking issue. The FCC’s net neutrality rules do not regulate the availability to customers of applications that are preloaded on phones. Indeed, the rules do not require that providers make available any preloaded apps. Rather, they address whether customers are able to download apps that compete with our voice or video telephony services. AT&T does not restrict customers from downloading any such lawful applications, and there are several video chat apps available in the various app stores serving particular operating systems….
But when you get down to the nitty gritty, it’s apparent and not at all surprising that AT&T’s decision is the result of their concern over their network being able to handle all that data.
We are broadening our customers’ ability to use the preloaded version of FaceTime but limiting it in this manner to our newly developed AT&T Mobile Share data plans out of an overriding concern for the impact this expansion may have on our network and the overall customer experience.
That is a lot easier to swallow than AT&T’s attempt to draw a seemingly artificial line between pre-loaded and downloaded apps. Indeed, Derek Turner of the consumer group Free Press had this to say on the matter.
“AT&T is inventing words that are not in the FCC’s rules in a weak attempt to justify its blocking of FaceTime. The FCC’s rules are crystal clear: AT&T is not permitted to block voice or video telephony applications that compete with its own services. There is simply nothing in the rules that distinguishes ‘preloaded’ applications from ‘downloaded’ applications.”
