The FCC recently buckled to AT&T, Verizon and Google and passed network neutrality rules that don't apply to wireless, opening the door to whatever discriminatory and absurd wireless pricing models carriers can dream up (and they are dreaming up some real gems to be sure). Our first glimpse at these new pricing models began yesterday courtesy of MetroPCS, whose latest LTE plans not only offer a very fractured Internet with ultra-low caps and circa-2000 walled gardens, but also discriminate certain content in favor of content from MetroPCS, and charge a premium should you want to access the "real" Internet. The folks at Free Press noticed, and have rung the neutrality alarm bells:Apparently, yes. Amusingly, most of the press coverage of yesterday's MetroPCS announcement simply lauded the fact the company was offering "unlimited Voice/SMS and LTE service for $40." Few bothered to note that what you get for your $40 is a crippled phone, locked inside a walled garden, incapable of accessing the actual Internet. Fewer still noticed that MetroPCS' tiers undeniably violate most of the established tenets of network neutrality, including content discrimination in favor of a company's own content and services. In short, MetroPCS forces you to pay a fee if you want real Internet access; otherwise you're locked in a walled garden and shovel fed awful MetroPCS content. It's the year 2000 all over again.

As we noted yesterday, MetroPCS is only currently offering one smartphone that supports their LTE network, so it's easy enough right now to cripple and tier the LTE consumer Internet experience for their financial benefit. That gets a little more difficult as more handsets arrive, and consumers have a choice of a crippled device that foists MetroPCS content upon them -- or open devices that give them full access to the content and services of their choice across an open network. Still, if you make consumer choice a luxury tier and real Internet access a high cost extra, it's easy enough to funnel most of your customers into your walled garden and your own content using pricing as a lure.

These kind of pricing models are precisely why carriers spent millions lobbying the FCC extensively to keep network neutrality rules away from wireless networks. As such, you can expect other carriers to follow suit, layering on ever-increasing ETFs, low caps, costly overages, walled gardens and long-term contracts onto their models in an effort to probe what the FCC will allow. Unfortunately for consumers, all indications are that the FCC majority (and the press, for that matter) amusingly believes this kind of archaic pricing is evolutionary and creative. As such, the FCC may just nod dumbly at such efforts as wireless broadband pricing very quickly becomes more confusing, more expensive, and increasingly more anti-competitive.