ReadWriteEnterprise

Last week's issuance by the Federal Communications Commission of rules to protect what some still call "net neutrality" was destined to be legally challenged by someone, on some grounds - that's the nature of regulatory government. (In a pre-emptive strike, Verizon filed its challenge last January.) But in the first of what will probably be several challenges since the order, the advocacy group Free Press makes one and only one argument.

It cuts to the quick, and then stops: The FCC can't adopt two sets of rules for a "mobile Internet" and a "fixed Internet," while pretending to uphold "one Internet" to the public.

The then-newly installed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, said in October 2009, "We are fast entering a world where mass-market mobile devices consume thousands of megabytes each month. So we must ask: What happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a BlackBerry Tour or whatever the next device is? What happens when we quadruple the number of subscribers with mobile broadband on their laptops or netbooks? The short answer: We will need a lot more spectrum."

Yesterday, a systematic and mathematical analysis of U.S. spectrum allocation blatantly called Genachowski's statement to the 2009 CTIA Wireless conference flat wrong.