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

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."

Comments

Re:can someone give the TL;DR

[twistedsymphony]

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.