BlackBerry CEO John Chen has said he thinks ‘net neutrality’ - preventing telecoms networks from restricting or prioritising certain types of internet traffic - should go further than just network operators and service providers.
In a letter to the US government (later published as a blog post) he says that neutrality should also be mandated for content and applications. He describes apps that are only available for iOS and Android devices as “discriminatory”, insisting that “applications/content providers must be prohibited from discriminating based on the customer’s mobile operating system”.
The idea was described as “profoundly stupid” by Jared Newman writing for PC World magazine, while Leo Sun at Motley Fool called the blog post “baffling” and Vlad Savov at The Verge said Mr Chen’s letter “conflates a whole bunch of issues into a specious, and utterly warped, argument”.