AT&T Merger Order Fuels Wireless Net Neutrality Debate
Wireless net neutrality will get more focus as Congress delves deeper into net neutrality legislation. Last week’s AT&T-BellSouth merger order opened the door to further debate, as AT&T agreed to extend net neutrality protections to fixed WiMAX (CD Jan 2 p1), sources said. But the same sources also said extending similar protections to mobile broadband - such as 3rd-generation services AT&T subsidiary Cingular offers - never figured in talks between AT&T and the FCC’s 2 Democrats. Extending net neutrality to fixed WiMAX, an alternative to wireline broadband, seemed logical to the Democrats.
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“An important barrier has been breached,” Harold Feld, senior vp of the Media Access Project, said of the merger order. “What the order does do is say any residential platform, whether it’s cable or DSL or wireless, should be subject to the same conditions,” he said. Mobile wireless invariably will become part of the debate, Feld said. “We will start to see efforts to extend net neutrality in that direction,” he said: “The argument that wireless is somehow different won’t be tenable in the future.”
“It’s quite significant that the Commission chose to apply net neutrality to the wireless platform,” Ben Scott, policy dir. at Free Press, said: “It sends a signal to Congress as to where the opinion of the expert agency lies.”
CTIA has studied the issue, last April polling members at its board meeting in Las Vegas for guidance on a wireless industry stance as net neutrality issues surface. CTIA later joined NetCompetition.org, which opposed net neutrality rules. Examples of wireless net neutrality include bans on carriers blocking subscribers from making VoIP phone calls over a 3G wireless network unless they used an approved VoIP provider.
In a real world example, eBay, owner of payment processor PayPal, voiced fears that Cingular has kept subscribers from using PayPal Mobile to buy on eBay. To make secure payments, PayPal needs a special code from each carrier’s text-messaging service. Cingular, intent on offering a rival service, won’t provide these codes, eBay said.
“Wireless has not been part of the net neutrality debate,” a wireless industry source said: “There’s nothing with respect to wireless net neutrality representations [in the merger order] and this merger had nothing to do with wireless since Cingular already was a jointly owned venture of the 2 companies.”
The provision’s impact is murky, especially since AT&T agreed as a merger condition to divest its 2.5 GHz spectrum, said a regulatory lawyer. The company could retain 2.3 GHz holdings. AT&T has announced WiMAX trials but has only limited commercial offerings. “If it applied to Cingular that would be a bigger deal than it just applying to AT&T fixed WiMAX,” the attorney said.
Congress hasn’t looked at wireless broadband as part of a broader debate on net neutrality law, sources said. House Telecom Subcommittee Chmn. Markey (D-Mass.) and other key figures know of the issue but feel time isn’t ripe for bills, Feld said: “It’s too nascent. Wireless isn’t that big of player in the market yet. We're concerned about protecting residential consumers.”