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BlackBerry Wants the FCC to Force Developers to Make BB10 Apps

BlackBerry Wants the FCC to Force Developers to Make BB10 Apps

BlackBerry CEO John Chen has written a letter to several members of Congress, asking them to require the Federal Communications Commission to enforce neutrality “at the application and content layer.” The letter calls out both Apple and Netflix for what he sees as unfair business practices. “Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service,” he writes.

Chen adds that regulations should force mobile development firms to create apps for all platforms:

“Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. This dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem, in which iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems. These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level.”

BlackBerry usage has plummeted in recent years, and the company has struggled to retain sizable market share in the industry it once dominated.

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