The popular sports network ESPN is negotiating with at least one wireless carrier to exempt its traffic from data caps. That's according to The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news on Thursday. However, "no such arrangement is imminent, and ESPN isn't sure if the economics will work out," the Journal said.

The network neutrality advocates at Public Knowledge wasted no time denouncing the rumored arrangement. "Imposing data caps on consumers and then allowing wealthy content holders to buy their way around them is a recipe for stagnation online," wrote PK's Michael Weinberg. He worried that a world of discriminatory data plans will tilt the playing field against small content providers.

The Journal didn't specify which carrier it was talking to, but both Verizon and AT&T are rumored to be open to such an arrangement. A Verizon executive said his firm was "actively exploring" the possibility of charging content providers for some of the wireless bandwidth used by consumers.

While such an arrangement violates network neutrality as it's conceived by groups such as PK, it probably wouldn't run afoul of the open Internet rules the Federal Communications Commission adopted during President Obama's first term. Those rules require wired broadband providers to treat all content equally. But wireless companies are permitted to discriminate as long as they're transparent about it and don't block sites outright. Charging different amounts for different sites, as AT&T and Verizon are reportedly considering, would likely be kosher under the FCC's rules.

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