CTIA President Meredith Baker questioned whether the FCC...
CTIA President Meredith Baker questioned whether the FCC can develop a definition for “reasonable network management” that will protect the wireless industry if the same basic net neutrality rules are imposed on mobile broadband and fixed. Baker spoke Monday at…
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the GSMA 360 North America conference in Atlanta (See related story), saying she would have rather focused on a topic other than net neutrality. “Parity for the sake of parity is nonsensical, and should never be the FCC’s objective or governing principle,” Baker said, in her prepared remarks. “Our differences cannot be simply defined away.” Net neutrality advocates haven’t offered a definition of reasonable network management “broad enough, or adaptive enough to capture today’s … mobile broadband experience, or provide broadband providers the certainty they need to invest billions more in networks and spectrum,” she said. The FCC is exploring the issues, including at a net neutrality roundtable Friday (CD Sept 22 p1). Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter, meanwhile, sent FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler a letter Monday questioning the wisdom of imposing tough new regulations on mobile. “A framework that would subject each and every management decision made by a mobile broadband provider to legal scrutiny under fixed-in-time administrative rules is particularly unworkable and unwise,” Spalter wrote. Mobile networks are unusually complicated, he said. They “rely increasingly on adaptive, self-optimizing and predictive algorithms in their management,” he said. “Mobile broadband networks must accommodate multiple generations of wireless service, hundreds of device types, and numerous operating systems, while also accounting for ever-changing demands within each cell site and constant reallocation of network resources to address users’ movements during any given communication."