Google's plan for an open wireless Internet: 'Crazy like a fox'?

Some net-neutrality purists sang dirges for the future of the wireless Internet on Monday after Google and Verizon announced a policy proposal that would exempt mobile services from a suggested non-discrimination rule, which the companies said should only apply to wired Internet traffic.

The wireless exemption has been portrayed as Google shifting away from a purer view of net neutrality — the notion that phone and cable companies should not speed up or slow down the content and applications that run over their networks. Net-neutrality activists have charged that Google is making an untenable concession to the telecommunications industry and to a company that will use its Android operating system on its phones. 

But some industry sources say Google's seeming policy shift might also be part of a longer strategy by the company in service to its long-held view that the Internet should remain open. "I would say Google's strategy is crazy like a fox," said one industry analyst, who noted the rough publicity Google has faced over the wireless exemption, including accusations from net-neutrality diehards that it is "evil." 

Google, the analyst and other industry sources said, might have made the seeming wireless concession because it already feels confident Verizon cannot go too far in flouting openness standards for wireless customers. Google helped secure openness rules from the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) two years ago that will govern Verizon's most advanced wireless offerings as it begins operating a 4G network. 

Verizon secured the spectrum it will use in its LTE network through the 700 MHz spectrum auction two years ago in a nearly $10 billion purchase. As a condition for bidding on the spectrum, Verizon had to agree to allow consumers to use any device and any lawful application on its mobile network. Those rules were imposed after Google plied the FCC to make openness a priority in the auction.

At the time, Verizon called open access mandates the "imposition of regulatory judgments and intervention in the markets" but eventually bid on the spectrum anyway. 

The goals of the open access standards, secured two years ago, mirror those of rules Google and Verizon proposed for wireline networks on Monday. The open-access standards might also thwart some of the doomsday scenarios for the mobile Internet that some net-neutrality advocates have described as a possible result of a wireless exemption to net-neutrality rules.

Not all carriers will be subject to the same open-access mandates that Verizon must comply with as a result of the auction, so the open-access standards are unlikely to appease net-neutrality proponents who point to the remaining potential for AT&T and other carriers to discriminate among traffic. 

But Verizon's offerings, as the country's largest wireless provider, could go a long way in shaping what consumers expect from the mobile Internet, forcing other companies to adopt openness standards because consumers will eventually demand it, one argument goes. Some analysts said Google likely had that possible trend in mind when it agreed to the wireless exemption.