Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Zero-Rating Harms Poor People, Public Interest Groups Tell FCC (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the along-the-lines-of-net-neutrality dept.

An anonymous reader links to an article on Motherboard: The nation's largest internet service providers are undermining US open internet rules, threatening free speech, and disproportionately harming poor people by using a controversial industry practice called "zero-rating," a coalition of public interest groups wrote in a letter to federal regulators on Monday. Companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T use zero-rating, which refers to a variety of practices that exempt certain services from monthly data caps, to undercut "the spirit and the text" of federal rules designed to protect net neutrality, the principle that all content on the internet should be equally accessible, the groups wrote. Zero-rated plans "distort competition, thwart innovation, threaten free speech, and restrict consumer choice -- all harms the rules were meant to prevent," the groups wrote. "These harms tend to fall disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color, who tend to rely on mobile networks as their primary or exclusive means of access to the internet."

4 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. can someone give the TL;DR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    On what the fck is 0rating

    1. Re:can someone give the TL;DR by kria · · Score: 4, Informative

      Zero-rating (also called toll-free data or sponsored data) is the practice of mobile network operators (MNO), mobile virtual network operators (MVNO), and Internet Service Providers (ISP) not to charge end customers for data used by specific applications or internet services through their network, in limited or metered data plans.[1][2][3][4][5][6] It allows customers to use provider-selected content sources or data services like an app store,[7] without worrying about bill shocks, which could otherwise occur if the same data was normally charged according to their data plans and volume caps. This has especially become an option to market 4G networks, but has also been used in the past for SMS or other content services.
      From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    2. Re:can someone give the TL;DR by twistedsymphony · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not a "fast lane", more like a "toll free" lane. The problem here isn't about speed, and I don't believe that's what net-netrality is about either. Anti-Net-Neutrality practices identify the content going through the data stream and treat some packets differently than others based on that content. Net-neutrality is about treating all packets equally, not just in terms of speed, but in terms of cost, or any other factor.

      --
      Collector's Edition
  2. Re:SJWs must in league with the ISPs... by youngatheart · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm struggling to find the argument for network neturality here

    I'll help.

    A company decides to give people unlimited data use on preferred, highly popular services. Services that those same communities really, really want.

    A company decides to limit customer's access to the internet, while giving unlimited access to their business partners. This is done so that the companies can make more money. The term for this type of business practice is called racketeering. "Racketeering is the act of offering of a dishonest service (a 'racket') to solve a problem that wouldn't otherwise exist without the enterprise offering the service.

    The companies benefiting from zero rating are also engaging in a business practice which is an attempt to keep their own income higher than they would be in an unrestricted market. The consumer is the one who has the least control of the situation and is thus the one most harmed.