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Comment by jasonjei | Hacker News Reader

Even better, the rules will apply to wireless and wired broadband in the same way, so you don’t have to worry that your phone switching from Wi-Fi to a 4G network will suddenly cause apps not to work or websites to become inaccessible. Lots of people use mobile devices as their primary way of accessing the Internet, so applying net neutrality rules to both equally will help make sure there is “one Internet” for all.

Does this mean Apple cannot enforce "must use over wifi restrictions"? As it stands now, I can't use LTE to download large apps, media, or stream on the iPhone or iPad. Would the FCC have any authority to force Apple to change these restrictions?

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There is less competition in smartphone OSes (2 dominant providers) than in most localities' high-speed internet (2 wired and 3+ wireless providers). So the same market-power rationales used for FCC regulation of ISPs could be used to justify strong federal regulation of the Apple & Google platforms.

There's a major difference in that I can easily use a non-dominant smartphone OS if I want to, but if some ISP doesn't cover my area, I can't use them no matter how much I might want to.

You're not necessarily wrong, but it's not quite the same.

App and data neutrality should be next. Apple shouldn't be able to monetize the phone they already sold me by extorting 30% of all apps I buy.

Google shouldn't be able to horde all the data. Make google a dumb pagerank index!

Presumably it would apply only to your LTE carrier, not built-in device limitations. That is a very weird thing for Apple to build in to a phone/tablet though...

That to me sounds like a decision apple made to protect all users from some massive LTE bill. Most people are already very paranoid their phone is going to rack up some huge bill without them noticing.

I can't think of any other reason, but it should at least be optional, as it often is even at the app level - Spotify lets me choose whether to stream on 4G and even set a different quality setting. On Android, updates only happen automatically on wifi, but I can manually apply them on a data connection if I want.

Unless it's a customisation as part of some deal with the carriers. I understand that this sort of thing is common in the States.

Apple's philosophy is generally not to expose a setting when a good default will satisfy 90% of the users. For something like this, where most people should have it disabled (being clueless about app sizes and data uses) and some power users might enable it, but clueless people will enable it and then complain about it, Apple will typically not make it configurable.

Not that I agree with their position, but that seems to be their approach.

Just wait for Comcast et al to tell us that implementing NN requires metered billing.

It might just be leftover from the early days of the iPhone, where AT&T, the original carrier of the iPhone in the states, complained about network congestion and bandwidth issues in highly populated areas.

I would think that AT&T may have asked Apple for some sort of limitation on non-essential services like this.

It's so careless users don't burn through their data plan in 3 minutes by downloading a multi gb app and movie. It's a safety net because the high majority of users do not have unlimited data plans. At least this is how I always interpreted this rule.

I don't think that is what that rule does. It is mainly to protect the user who downloads an app to still be able to use it if they are on wifi and 4G, even if the app maker didn't pay to have "special access" to the 4G network that month.

Is this something Apple actually controls or is it tied in with the carriers? I seem to recall my old grandfathered unlimited plan on Verizon letting me download anything when ever.

It seems to be a software limitation. On an iPhone, if you try to download a movie from the iTunes app, you'll be prompted to switch to wifi--the download won't proceed. It isn't tied to carrier, I think, but at the iOS level.

I hope so.

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