What Obama’s network neutrality plan could mean for your mobile phone

Get ready to hear a lot about the future of Music Freedom. T-Mobile's free music streaming service could soon find itself in the middle of a high-stakes battle over whether Internet service providers should be able to give Web companies preferential treatment on their networks.

Music Freedom is a so-called zero-rated app that offers data-free access to services like Rhapsody, Pandora and iTunes radio. (With zero-rated apps, either the network operator or the content provider picks up the cost of the data that users consume.) Zero-rated apps are particularly popular in parts of the world where it is very expensive to download data to watch a movie or browse the Web. But whether or not those apps would be allowed in the United States under a far-reaching network neutrality plan proposed by President Barack Obama isn't yet clear. He called on the Federal Communications Commission to adopt strict rules that would forbid Internet service providers from charging content companies (like Netflix) to get priority access to consumers. Most of the debate around the rules has centered on broadband service to homes, but President Obama advocated for applying them to mobile Internet providers, as well.