Users who have been longing to access television on demand from their iPhones were quite annoyed recently when they learned that AT&T would be diverting bandwidth from the SlingPlayer application. AT&T claims that the application would consume so much bandwidth as to make the network unusable for other customers, which seems like a real possiblity given the dire condition of America’s cell phone networks. But what AT&T is not admitting is that they may be breaking SlingPlayer in order to give preferential treatment to their own streaming application, i-Verse, which would work with the telecom’s own U-Verse service to stream recorded shows from home digital video recorders (DVRs) to the iPhone. If this is the case, AT&T is almost certainly breaking the law.
It has been established through legal precedent that service providers have to abide by net neutrality, the principle that the content users access online cannot be limited by the provider. Last year, when Comcast started selectively throttling Bit Torrent traffic, the FCC ruled that it was doing so illegally and handed Comcast a cease-and-desist order. AT&T’s alleged practice of limiting SlingPlayer is nigh-identical: the company is throttling traffic for specific content, as Comcast was, and doing so to prevent network congestion, exactly as Comcast claimed.
The only complication is that AT&T is breaking SlingPlayer over a mobile network, so the concerns of congestion may be real in this case, whereas Comcast’s reasoning was found to be a lie. Still, this should not change the legal status of the issue. Hopefully the FCC will become involved before more companies decide to join AT&T on the bandwagon.
