Everything you need to know about network neutrality for your smartphone

You can expect the fight over wireless network neutrality rules to focus on a key portion of the Communications Act known as Section 332.

All Section 332 really says is that the Federal Communications Commission can use Title II to regulate some aspects of wireless but not others. In one bucket you have voice/Commercial Mobile Radio Service (CMRS)/regulable-by-Title II, and in the other you have data/Private Mobile Radio Service (PMRS)/not-regulable-by-Title II. CTIA, the largest wireless industry association, argues mobile broadband falls in the PMRS category. This is a problem for the FCC if it wants to impose strong net neutrality rules on wireless companies. What Harold Feld of Public Knowledge argues is simple: Redefine mobile broadband as CMRS, which the law says you can regulate under Title II, and the FCC will be able to implement stronger rules. But industry argues data and telephony are separate, and since a CMRS has to talk to phone numbers in one way or another, and since mobile broadband doesn't do that, mobile broadband is not a CMRS. Another way around this would be for the FCC to argue the country's phone network and the country's data network have essentially merged. If the FCC can successfully argue that telephony and mobile data are cut from the same cloth, then it can apply strong regulations to wireless providers under Title II.