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If an app maker makes an app for iOS and Android, should they also be required to make one for Blackberry鈥檚 app store?

Blackberry chief executive John Chen says yes, and that this debate is an extension of net neutrality 鈥� the idea that tech companies should be protected from paying telecoms for faster online services.

Mr. Chen laid out Blackberry鈥檚 thoughts on net neutrality and laid out his argument for 鈥渁pp neutrality鈥� in a memo to Congress (released in a condensed form on ) this week. He says that while telecom companies lay the infrastructure of the Internet, the content that uses that infrastructure is created by third parties. He says it isn鈥檛 fair for those content creators to limit their distribution to just one app store or the other.聽

鈥淚f we are truly to have an open Internet, policymakers should demand openness not just at the traffic/transport layer, but also at the content/applications layer of the ecosystem,鈥� Chen writes. 鈥淏anning carriers from discriminating but allowing content and applications providers to continue doing so will solve nothing.鈥�

There is a backstory to Chen鈥檚 argument. After he took over as CEO, the company worked to expand its most popular services to a variety of mobile systems to counteract huge financial losses. Most notably, it released Blackberry Messenger to iOS and Android. However, other major tech companies have not returned the favor with their services, which Chen says puts Blackberry and others at a disadvantage. He cites Apple not releasing iMessage to Android or Blackberry, and Netflix not creating a Blackberry app as examples of this discrimination.

鈥淭his 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,鈥� he writes. 鈥淭hese are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level.鈥�

Industry experts are dubious.

鈥淭he point of net neutrality rules is to maintain the Internet in its non-discriminatory state,鈥� . 鈥淲ith Chen鈥檚 proposal of app neutrality, no such non-discriminatory state exists. Each new platform merely creates more work for developers, thereby requiring greater investment. Under Chen鈥檚 proposal, the barriers to entry for a small startup would become greater, and innovation would be stifled. App neutrality may be beneficial for BlackBerry, but it would actually counteract the things that net neutrality is trying to achieve.鈥�

Since anyone can create an operating system, it would also be very difficult for federal regulators (and app creators) to understand which OS would have to be considered under this regulation, Mr. Newman says.

鈥淚t鈥檚 also worth noting that BlackBerry doesn鈥檛 offer native BBM apps for Windows, Mac OS X or the web, so it鈥檇 be violating its own idea right out of the gate,鈥� he adds.

In other words, it would create a lot of work for app makers, which could stifle innovation, says Forbes鈥� Ewan Spence.

鈥淚t would increase the costs on every mobile developer as they would be forced to write the same app for multiple operating systems, potentially in multiple languages, to be released at the same time, and offer continued support across a huge range of handsets,鈥�

This week, there are several congressional committees weighing President Obama and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler鈥檚 proposal to wired and wireless broadband as Title II services. If this stands, telecoms would have to adhere to more than 100 pages of regulation that prevent them from acting against the public鈥檚 interest. Critics worry that the regulation, which was last updated in 1996, isn't up to date enough to address the Internet as it stands today.

The net neutrality debate is over whether ISPs can charge Internet companies more for taking up a larger bandwidth. This issue has grown in prominence over the past year as video streaming services, such as Netflix, paid extra to ensure their customers would have smooth streaming.聽