While the company says the plans are intended to give customers the choice of levels of service, the plans look to be in conflict with the FCC’s new net neutrality rules. Those controversial rules, passed just before Christmas, prohibit mobile carriers from blocking access to websites or “blocking applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services, subject to reasonable network management.”

MetroPCS’s announcement comes just weeks after the FCC issued new rules that would require cable and DSL companies to allow customers to use the applications, devices and services of their choice without the companies creating fast and slow lanes of traffic. However, the FCC is applying only a subset of those rules to mobile wireless companies. Nearly all of the rules for all carriers include an exception for “reasonable” network management.

That phrase, critics say, leaves a gaping loophole, and it looks to be one that MetroPCS is trying to use.

“The FCC rules are so vague and vaporous that it’s unclear,” said Art Brodsksy, the communications chief for the pro-net neutrality group Public Knowledge. “Under normal conditions, we’d start screaming this is a violation of net neutrality.”

For instance, VoIP calls are explicitly blocked in MetroPCS’s terms of service as an application that causes too much stress on its network. The terms of service also seems to make it possible for MetroPCS to block other online services that one might consider “web browsing,” such as the online personalized radio station Pandora.

The company also claims the right to block users from dialing certain phone numbers, at their discretion, though common carrier rules, the cousin of net neutrality rules that apply to the phone system, require phone companies to connect all calls.

Continue reading …

Pages: 1 2 View All

Authors: Ryan Singel

to know more click here