AT&T announced last week that it will be restricting usage of Apple’s FaceTime over Cellular feature in iOS 6 to customers on its new Mobile Share plans. The company has been blasted for the decision, mainly by consumers who don’t want to change their current service plans.
It’s also been criticized by the digital advocacy organization Public Knowledge h of violating FCC rules on net neutrality. John Bergmayer, a lawyer for Public Knowledge told the “New York Times” (http://macte.ch/RNuWz) said AT&T was violating the F.C.C.’s Open Internet Rules, which say that mobile providers shall not “block applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services.”
“There is no technical reason why one data plan should be able to access FaceTime and another not,” he said.
Now AT&T has issued a statement on the matter, entitled “Enabling FaceTime Over Our Mobile Broadband Network.” You can read it at http://macte.ch/11Hhr .
