Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg -- America's preeminent consumer technology reviewer and truth-teller -- asked a simple but obvious question: Why can consumers use the device, aps and content of their
choice on wired Internet connections, but not on wireless pipes that rely on government licenses to use the public's airwaves?

The article and his video interview are available on Mossblog at D/All Things Digital.

The big cell phone carriers, which Mossberg calls "the Soviet Ministries," are being allowed by the FCC to "limit consumer choice, stifle innovation,
crush entrepreneurialism, and [make] the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile technology world." He is charitable enough not to single out the FCC for blame -- but it's not as if the compelling logic of extending the
wireline world's consumer choice principles hasn't been proposed and advocated before the Commission this year.

Indeed, the telephone system's version of "network neutrality," known as the Carterfone principles, has worked well for nearly 40 years.

Carterfone was the 1968 court decision, later expanded by the FCC, which required AT&T to allow consumers to connect the device of their choice to the landline phone network and to run any application. This led over time to innovations including fax machines and, most critically, the original dial-up Internet.

Since broadband access will be increasingly a mobile application, public interest advocates initiated a campaign this year to impose the Carterfone consumer choice principles on the wireless carriers. See Tim Wu’s paper on Wireless
Carterfone published by the New America Foundation. Mossberg used Wu’s paper when he cross-examined AT&T's EVP Jim Cicconi on this issue at the Technology Policy Summit last February.

Skype (now part of e-Bay) filed a petition shortly after this, asking the FCC to rule whether Carterfone applied to wireless broadband access. Our Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC) comments in support of extending Carterfone and net neutrality principles to wireless broadband are here.

Public interest advocates recently won an initial skirmish in this battle over the openness of the wireless Internet: This summer the FCC agreed to make full consumer choice a condition on licenses for one-third of the former analog TV band spectrum that will be auctioned in January 2008. Once analog TV turns off,in February 2009, this 22 MHz band could be the pipe for a consumer-friendly alternative to the cellphone carriers.

AT&T and Verizon certainly fear this; in fact, just this week Verizon gave up its challenge to the FCC auction rules after the Court of Appeals refused to hear the case prior to the auction. See Verizon Wireless Gives Up Challenge to FCC Auction Rules (CNNMoney).

Now we need to increase public pressure on the FCC to broaden this precedent so that all wireless consumers have choice.