“Good Business Practice”

By Bruce Mehlman

With the most hardcore advocates pushing for net neutrality regulations to be extended to wireless, Nick Shulz of the American Enterprise Institute, in a guest editorial for the Modesto Bee, explains why such a move just doesn’t make sense:

Net neutrality means different things to different people.

For those critics of the Google and Verizon blueprint, it means that all data that moves over the wireless Internet should be treated equally; and wireless providers should not be permitted to block applications for use over their spectrum.

The problem is that net neutrality has never existed over the wireless Internet and it never will, for good reason.

Wireless spectrum is a scarce resource and managing the increasing flow of telephone calls, text messages, e-mails, video games, audio and video streams and who knows what else in the future means data can’t in any meaningful sense be treated equally or neutrally. Network operators must have the flexibility to manage their networks as they see fit.

All wireless providers already block certain applications, such as P2P software, that would be too disruptive to their wireless systems. This is good business practice.