Cingular Against Net Neutrality for Consumers

While Cingular announced support for video calling, Cingular has also expressed willingness to embrace VoIP. This includes third-party VoIP providers. However, Cingular followed up by stating that they needed to support VoIP with a business model that allowed for them to charge for it. Considering existing data plans for Cingular are now under $20/month, this indicates that Cingular is against to so-called “Net Neutrality”.

Net Neutrality is the position that data that flows over the internet should not be billed differently, regardless of the application or protocol. Previously, Cingular has been the most Net Neutral of any wireless provider, quietly approving of Phone-As-Modem applications on their consumer data plans. Only T-Mobile has matched Cingular in Net Neutrality on consumer data plans until today.

Cingular’s new position on Net Neutrality comes as no surprise. Cingular will become AT&T Wireless upon (or shortly after) the transaction of AT&T’s merger with BellSouth. AT&T, a major national ISP, has maintained a consistent position against Net Neutrality for years.Discuss In Our Forums