This complex issue is likely to be settled -- one way or the other -- only when lobbyists are through beating Congress into submission. In the meantime, I got to thinking -- how will this issue affect wireless and vice versa?

If you're not familiar with the concept, suffice it to say for our purposes here that a neutral network carries anything given to it with no value judgments regarding the packets carried. This was the original vision of the Internet -- move data in a reliable, survivable fashion. If a packet is properly formatted, send it on.

But the Internet (and the original Web) were built with an almost altruistic vision of networking. Today, we live in an era when large corporations would like to make a buck moving data around. I don't begrudge them this objective, nor should any of us. There's nothing wrong with making money by providing goods and services that a willing buyer would pay for.

One can argue, though, that a communications network, especially one owned by a large corporation, isn't like most other commodities. Since it costs a small fortune to build, operate, maintain and market these networks, competition may be difficult to come by. In the long run, economies of scale set in, and competition isn't all that possible. Want to start a phone company? That was the vision behind the break-up up of AT&T, and it worked, for a while. It led to all of those annoying dinnertime calls from telemarketers offering long distance for a few cents less per minute that the other guys, but that was short-lived. Long distance got so cheap that today it's literally given away either as part of local wired service, cellular plans or Skype.

Today, however, wireless is the big communications opportunity. Many people now use a cell phone as their primary or even only phone, and their numbers will increase dramatically during the next few years. More people will also use wireless data services, both cellular and Wi-Fi, as others, like WiMax, begin to emerge. So, now's a good time to ask: Should Net neutrality apply to wireless operators?