Regardless of Sprint’s and Verizon’s definitions of open, it’s likely that Internet companies are using a different dictionary. If wireless networks become truly open, bandwidth-hogging applications such as peer-to-peer networking and high-quality video streaming are likely to eat up capacity at a tremendous rate. Carriers already are trying to set restrictions on high-volume usage on their wireline broadband networks. It’s hard to imagine they won’t try to place similar restrictions on the even more capacity-limited wireless networks.

“Five Slingboxes will kill a cell site,” said Miguel Myhrer, head of the North American wireless practice for Accenture, which is advising carriers on their convergence plans. “These cell sites were engineered for voice, not broadband data.”

Ultimately such high-bandwidth services may have to be provided by the network operators themselves. But if that’s the case, can the networks truly be open? Perhaps the answer for the carriers isn’t in restricting other service providers from offering services on their networks, but in making their own services more attractive than those of their competitors. By controlling the network, an AT&T, Sprint or Verizon can offer prioritization and guarantee high-capacity channels for their content. Sling Media would still have access to the wireless channel, but the video delivered by the carrier service would be of higher quality. Net neutrality proponents probably still would find that restrictive, but the alternative is a purely closed network.

Add the carrier’s direct billing and care relationship to its ownership of network assets and the carrier has a much more influential position over the customer than one might think, said Michael O’Hara, general manager for Microsoft’s communications sector.

“The service providers have a number of very powerful assets,” O’Hara said. “Tearing down their walled gardens doesn’t prevent them from being differentiators.”

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