Yesterday, the FCC voted in favor of net neutrality. Many argue that, while this is a step forward for net neutrality, the rules that have been put in place aren’t nearly enough. One of the main concerns for those in favor of net neutrality are the rules regarding mobile broadband. Engadget has found some interesting bits in the released online.sodapdf.com PDF in a section titled “Measured Steps for Mobile Broadband”:
Further, we recognize that there have been meaningful recent moves toward openness, including the introduction of open operating systems like Android. In addition, we anticipate soon seeing the effects on the market of the openness conditions we imposed on mobile providers that operate on upper 700 MHz C-Block spectrum, which includes Verizon Wireless, one of the largest mobile wireless carriers in the U.S.In light of these considerations, we conclude it is appropriate to take measured steps at this time to protect the openness of the Internet when accessed through mobile broadband.
Regardless of which side you choose in regards to net neutrality, it’s pretty obvious that the operating system running on a mobile device has nothing to do with how open the service provider is. As Engadget puts it:
it doesn’t matter how open your OS is when you’re stuck with a filtered and throttled connection, and it’s a pretty huge stretch to think Android’s openness (however you want to define it) has anything to do with network access itself.
MG Siegler at TechCrunch has a much stronger opinion on matter, basically occusing the FCC of colluding with Google and Verizon:
It was only a month ago that FCC head Julius Genachowski said that the Verizon/Google proposal “slowed down” the process of coming up with a net neutrality proposal. Apparently, that’s because they had to rewrite the thing to include exactly what Verizon and Google agreed upon.
Whatever the case may be, this debate is far from over and we will probably see a lot more interesting things come out as more people analyze the FCC’s decision.