The iPhone -> AT&T Contretemps

AlexC posted about Rep Ed Markey's attacking the iPhone for its exclusivity with AT&T. I posted a flip comment. But Holman Jenkins sees some nefarious underpinnings in the superbly titled: Sort of Evil (Paid link)

Jenkins sees this as a grab for rent-seeking by Google, now that its net neutrality dreams are failing.

You're saying to yourself, haven't Google and friends been gnashing their teeth over the landline practices of the Verizons and Comcasts, demanding "net neutrality" regulations to be erected against crimes to be named later? Yes, and without much success. Consider a recent Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute study that found that imposing Google's idea of "net neutrality" (i.e., restricting a network operator's ability to prioritize urgent and non-urgent data) would end up cutting a network's peak capacity in half.

Now Google and friends are turning to wireless, which they hope will prove a softer target. Here operators traditionally have built networks for the restricted purpose of letting customers make voice calls with an operator-supplied cellphone. But most operators have also started rolling out all-purpose broadband on their wireless networks, albeit high-priced and painfully slow (evidence of their need to ration capacity carefully to protect higher-priority voice traffic).