AT&T’s FaceTime limits could violate FCC rules
The New York Times reports:
“Public Knowledge, a nonprofit group that focuses on Internet law, says that by prohibiting its other customers from using the video-calling feature on the network, AT&T is violating net-neutrality rules by blocking a service that potentially competes with its own.
John Bergmayer, senior staff lawyer at Public Knowledge, said AT&T was violating the F.C.C.’s Open Internet Rules, which say that mobile providers shall not “block applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services.”
AT&T, of course, is maintaining that it has done nothing wrong. Here’s a statement from Mark Siegel, a spokesman for the carrier:
“FaceTime is available to all of our customers today over Wi-Fi, and now we’re expanding its availability even further as an added benefit of our new Mobile Share data plans.”
