FCC Explains Rationale for Like Treatment of Fixed, Mobile Under Net Neutrality Rules
The FCC's net neutrality order, released Thursday, finds that mobile should be subject to the same rules as fixed broadband. In comparison to the 2010 net neutrality order, wireless is no longer “nascent,” the agency found. The “Mobile broadband marketplace…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
has evolved, and continues to evolve,” the FCC said. “Mobile broadband networks are faster, more broadly deployed, more widely used, and more technologically advanced than they were in 2010.” The order notes the proliferation of wireless devices designed to access the Internet, with more than 127 million devices with LTE wireless connections already in the market. Wireless carriers of the past had a “well-established record” of trying to keep applications behind a carrier-controlled "walled garden,” though that is no longer the case, the FCC said. But consumers must still be protected “from mobile commercial practices masquerading as ‘reasonable network management,’” the order states. The text attempts to counter arguments made by CTIA and wireless carriers against imposing the same rules on mobile that are imposed on fixed broadband. Though Chairman Tom Wheeler had singled out T-Mobile as a supporter of the order at the Feb. 26 meeting (see 1502260043), the order specifically notes objections the carrier had filed at the agency. “Although mobile providers generally argue that additional rules are not necessary to deter practices that would limit Internet openness, concerns related to the openness practices of mobile broadband providers have arisen,” the order said. “The confoundingly complicated and confusing 400-page net neutrality rule book the FCC released today may be a windfall for Beltway telecom lawyers and lobbyists, but for the rest of us who care about the future of our open and innovative Internet, not so much,” Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter said. PCIA President Jonathan Adelstein, a former Democratic FCC commissioner, also expressed concerns. “The wireless infrastructure industry’s biggest concern is how these voluminous rules impact capital expenditures, and the jobs, economic growth, and technological development that come with them,” Adelstein said. “Any reduction of wireless investment would hurt the U.S. in the global marketplace.”