T-Mobile Is Likely Violating Net Neutrality
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/12/t_mobile_s_binge_on_program_likely_violates_net_neutrality.html
The cable and phone companies have wasted no time in testing
these limits. Comcast is both exempting its new Netflix
competitor from data caps and prioritizing it in a special lane
as a supposedly "non-Internet" service. Verizon has announced a
program to charge applications for exempting them from the data
caps applying to other apps. AT&T also offers this service,
which it calls "sponsored data." And T-Mobile has announced
that it will exempt some video applications from users' monthly
allotment, while reducing the quality of all video on its
network. All of this goes on even though cable and phone
companies seem to recognize that these practices violate the
public interest; recently three cable companies seeking merger
approval in a public interest statement apparently think it's
not in the public interest to exempt apps from data caps or to
charge for interconnection, or else they would not have offered
to abstain from these practices for several years. Unless the
FCC investigates and stops these practices across the Internet
market, its vaunted net neutrality rule could be remembered more
as useless, lovely poetry than breathing, living law. But the
FCC has at least one simple case that violates its existing
rules--rather than dancing around the edges. Recently, T-Mobile
announced that subscribers on plans with caps of 3 GB and more
would be automatically enrolled in a product called Binge On.
That service is best known for exempting some video services,
such as Netflix, from users' monthly data allotments, but not
others, like YouTube, TwitchTV, or Vimeo. In response, many
people suggested that this could violate net neutrality--because
T-Mobile is discriminating in exempting some applications from
data caps.
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--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so.
My opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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