Net Neutrality Order Raises Questions About LTE Broadcast, AEI's Lyons Says

FCC net neutrality rules pose a potential threat to LTE broadcast, which lets wireless carriers multicast over their networks, said Daniel Lyons, a visiting fellow with the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications and Technology Policy, in a blog post Wednesday. The traditional way carriers transmit video, as an individual copy of requested content to each consuming device, “makes little sense when multiple people are consuming the same content at the same time, as many do during the Super Bowl or other live sporting events,” Lyons said. LTE broadcast uses a portion of the network to transmit one copy of the content to multiple devices. The net neutrality order doesn’t directly address LTE broadcast, Lyons said. But it could potentially violate the order’s paid prioritization ban, he said. “Because carriers must reserve a portion of cell capacity to engage in LTE broadcasting, a creative lawyer might argue that LTE broadcast allows a carrier to use ‘resource reservation’ to ‘directly or indirectly favor some traffic over other traffic’ in violation of the Commission’s prohibition, if done ‘in exchange for consideration’ or ‘to benefit an affiliated entity,’” he said. LTE broadcast would also be a strong candidate for a waiver of the ban, as allowed by the order, Lyons said. “It is also possible that the FCC would consider LTE broadcast a non-BIAS [broadband Internet access] service that is exempt from the Open Internet rules, like the cable company’s facilities-based VoIP service or IP television,” he said. “One can describe LTE broadcast as an ‘application-level’ service that shares capacity with the carrier’s broadband service but does not itself offer access to large portions of the Internet.”