
A new pricing plan by Metro PCS has
prompted some advocates to complain that the wireless company is violating neutrality principles.
MetroPCS's cheapest new 4G plan, announced this week, allows subscribers unlimited access to
voice, texting, Web browsing and YouTube for $40 a month. But the catch is that people who sign up for that plan reportedly will not be able to access certain types
of data or applications -- including, apparently, Skype.
While MetroPCS is offering less restrictive plans to people who pay more, the limits on the $40 plan are proving controversial. Advocacy
group Free Press said on Tuesday that the plan's restrictions violate the Federal Communications Commission's recent neutrality rules. Those regulations, which the FCC passed last month by a 3-2 vote,
prohibit mobile broadband providers from blocking or degrading applications that compete with the providers' voice or video telephony services.
"You can't block competing VoIP services on a
broadband connection," says Free Press policy counsel Chris Riley. "Charging more to have access to individual services is the same thing as blocking them, as far as I'm concerned."
Metro PCS's
terms of service also provide that some plans come with data usage caps that can be as low as 1 GB per month. But the company's terms say that not all data will count toward the cap. Among the
material that might be excluded is data from the company's MetroSTUDIO and @metro store.
That set-up also is potentially problematic, according to Riley. He says that a data cap does not violate
neutrality principles as long as it is applied to all data equally. But caps that only apply when consumers attempt to access certain companies' content might violate the FCC's prohibition against
blocking.
While Free Press is urging the FCC to investigate, the advocacy group has not yet filed a formal complaint about the new plans.
Metro PCS did not respond to inquiries by
Online Media Daily.