Will FCC pry iPhone loose from AT&T?

[Commentary] If you're wondering whether Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski finally will pry the iPhone from AT&T's cold dead hands and release it into the wild, you're not alone. "Would the proposed net neutrality rules result in a default ban of exclusivity deals?" asks Ryan Radia, information policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free enterprise and limited government organization based in Washington (DC). "That would not be the case, based on my understanding of the proposed rules." Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of Media Access Project, a public interest law group in Washington, was quoted this week in a Bloomberg News report as saying, "The iPhone can't be exclusive under a true net neutrality regime." But CEI's Radia says exclusivity may still be possible, provided the agreement doesn't carry provisions that would conflict with whatever the final network neutrality rules might be. "[Deals may be legal] so long as the deals do not prevent a consumer from accessing the content of their choice," he says. But, if Apple and AT&T allowed access to only a subset of applications or services, such a practice would likely be illegal.