Wireless carriers shouldn’t be allowed to block certain types of internet traffic flowing over their networks, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said Sept. 21 in a speech that predictably got a cool response from the industry, but fell in line with what higher-education IT officials have lobbied for in recent years.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said wireless carriers should be subject to the same “open internet” rules the agency has begun to apply to home broadband providers. That might mean that a carrier couldn’t, for example, ban the use of file-sharing services on its wireless network (as AT&T Inc. does now).

An open federal internet policy is critical for colleges and universities that depend on unimpeded web access for distance-education courses and relaying important research, campus technology officials have argued before Congress. In June 2006, Jeff Kuhns, senior IT director at Penn State University, told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that “universities use the internet to provide vital … services [and] are constantly developing new internet-based applications that we hope to share with the American public.”

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