NFC Rumors

Is Verizon big enough to buy the law it wants as it opposes net neutrality and NFC consumer protection

Verizon opposes net neutrality, what does that mean for NFC?

Fair minded and “open ecosystem” friendly Verizon has decided it shouldn’t have to follow Net Neutrality rules, and so they have mounted an appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit of the Federal Communications Commission’s December 2010 Report and Order (FCC 10-201). We can’t say we didn’t see this coming, and Big Red didn’t fail to disappoint when filing its appeal. Verizon refers to the FCC’s mandate to protect consumers and businesses from telecom providers and internet service providers from prioritizing traffic, allowing some, disallowing other traffic and charging others for access. Make no mistake - NFC is in danger of being abused.

That traffic includes NFC payment data that travels over the MNO networks in the form of SWP (single wire protocol). If you are new to NFC payments, think of SWP like you would an encrypted SMS message that conveys transactional details to payment networks like Visa and MasterCard. Should Verizon be successful in breaking any type of Net Neutrality influence and regulation of mobile network operators or telecom providers, it leaves it free to control NFC payments on its network as it chooses despite what is in consumers’ best interests. 

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