Net Neutrality Advocates: Wireless Carriers' Network Management Must be 'Reasonable'

Emboldened by their summertime victory against Comcast, advocates of network neutrality said Thursday that the next front in battle for the principle would be against wireless carriers who make "unreasonable" network management decisions. In a panel discussion on managing wireless networks at the Wireless Communications Association conference, Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott and Google Telecom Counsel Richard Whitt said that the FCC's Net neutrality principles would bar discrimination over wireless networks - while conceding that the networks are, for the time being, more bandwidth-constrained than wired-based network. Wireless networks "are not different," said Scott. "We made this mistake in the 1996 Telecom Act, and regulated different technologies under different rules, and we are paying the price."