Public Knowledge Criticizes AT&T's Mobile App Plan

Advocacy group Public Knowledge is panning a new plan by AT&T to allow app developers to purchase a service it describes as a toll-free number for mobile broadband.

Public Knowledge says the plan will disadvantage developers that can't afford to pay for consumers' data. "Right now, the system works the same for every application," says Public Knowledge's legal director, Harold Feld. By contrast, he says, the new plan will necessarily favor big companies at the expense of startups, he says. "People who are trying to compete with Facebook, and operating on a shoestring, will not be able to pay." Public Knowledge says that AT&T's plan demonstrates why the Federal Communications Commission should investigate telecoms' decisions to impose data caps, as well as its 2010 shift toward tiered mobile broadband pricing. Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, said the new proposal is “is exactly the type of market manipulation we hoped the FCC’s Open Internet rules would prevent."