
Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate - fraqed
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/why-zero-rating-is-the-new-battleground-in-net-neutrality-debate-1.3015070?cmp=rss
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ohitsdom
I've been following net neutrality issues pretty closely and this is the first
I've heard the term "zero rating". I didn't have a clear understanding of the
term after reading the article, since I wasn't sure if zero rating was the
exemption or if ISPs were exempting services from the zero rating. The
wikipedia[0] entry helped, also referring to it as "toll-free data" which
cleared up the confusion for me.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-
rating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating)

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jkot
A few centuries ago England used number of water channels for transportation.
There was a law that owner of channel could not be associated with user in any
way.

~~~
timthorn
Until 1990, it used to be that the mobile phone networks in the UK were not
allowed to have a relationship with the retail customers on their network,
instead with the billing and account management performed by a range of third
parties.

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dfgsdfgs
I've lived in Canada and the US. Canada's providers made me like Comcast. The
service is very bad, with caps on cable (80G when I left), high cost,
collusion among the two service providers, a regulator in their pocket, and
publicity campaigns to stoke nationalism to block foreign (i.e. US) providers
from coming in.

Just like the US, but so much worse.

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fphhotchips
Personally, I think zero rating is a good thing, especially as it operates in
the Australian environment (or, at least, how it has operated previously). It
has largely been consumer positive, allowing premium tier ISPs to
differentiate themselves by making the effort to peer with service providers,
and consumers benefit from the free quota. There are some distasteful uses
though - where there are exclusive peering agreements, particularly around
sporting events.

All in all, I think the CRTC has taken a pretty good approach. Perhaps the
third-party only rule should be extended to refusing exclusivity arrangements,
but a complete ban is over the top in my opinion - it discourages passing on
savings made by peering with companies to consumers.

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sbarre
The article makes the correct point that even if the upside is access to more
services for now, zero-rating effectively favours big companies and big
services, (who have the money and time to negotiate these deals with carriers
and ISPs) and removes the "level playing field" which most people believe is
at the core of the Internet and fuels innovation and allows startup services
to thrive and grow.

~~~
IBM
There's no level playing field in business as it is. Incumbents have the
advantage of having more resources than start-ups, that's what makes
disruption hard. Saying zero rating shouldn't be allowed is worse for me as a
consumer, I'd definitely like it if music streaming apps I use made deals with
my wireless carrier so I could stream as much as I wanted.

You (and startups) are basically asking for a subsidy that doesn't exist for
anyone else. No one is giving Jolla a hand in taking on Samsung or Apple in
the phone business.

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golemotron
You should just say that you don't buy the argument of net neutrality. The
intent is that network access is non-discriminatory. ISPs will not be allowed
to offer special deals that benefit one service provider over another. It's
not a subsidy, it's treating bandwidth as a regulated utility.

You can choose to imagine cellphone hardware as a utility but clearly it is
not.

~~~
JoshTriplett
So, an ISP that makes a deal with a content provider to host a server caching
the content provider's data on their network, specifically to improve
bandwidth and reduce transit costs, should not be allowed to pass on that
savings to the customer, and should instead be forced to pocket it all
themselves?

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wtallis
They shouldn't pass on the savings to just _some_ of the customers; there's no
reason they can't pass on the savings to _all_ of their customers. After all,
everyone benefits: those using the service with the CDN node get a faster path
to that content, and everyone else gets a less congested path to the rest of
the internet.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> They shouldn't pass on the savings to just some of the customers; there's no
> reason they can't pass on the savings to all of their customers.

So they shouldn't be allowed to pass the savings on to the customers who
actually use the service in question and thus benefit from the colocated
server? And this is supposed to be more "fair"? And somehow the ISP's rate
model for their customers is yours to dictate?

Consider if ISPs actually charged customers by data transfer, the way many
large datacenters do. What actually costs the ISP money is data transferred
_outside_ the ISP's network, going over peering connections. Many datacenters
don't charge for bandwidth within their own network; for instance, bandwidth
between AWS nodes in the same area is free. So why can't an ISP use the same
model, and only charge for bandwidth going over their peering connections but
not for bandwidth that stays inside their own network (such as to the YouTube
or Wikipedia mirror they're hosting)?

For the record, I _do_ believe in network neutrality in the sense that ISPs
should not be artificially limiting bandwidth to particular Internet services
(though I'd prefer to see that solved more naturally through ISP competition,
but there's a severe lack of local ISP competition available). I don't,
however, see anything wrong with setting up additional peering/colocation/etc
arrangements that are designed to be mutually beneficial to the ISP, their
customers, _and_ the services whose data they're carrying.

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amazon_not
The cost savings from CDN colocation and peering to the ISP as so miniscule
that, even if they were passed on in full, would barely register on your bill.
We are talking about fractions of a cent per customer.

Zero rating is not about passing on cost savings, it's about market power and
discrimination.

Also, datacenters do not usually charge by data transfer. Just because Amazon
does it (and overcharges by two orders of magnitude) does not mean others do
it.

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cachesking
If used in the right context, I don't see a problem with 'zero rating.'
T-mobile[0] has been doing this for a little bit now and, to me, it seems to
be beneficial. The issues only arise when you are zero rating individual
services belonging to one genre or vertical. Saying that Netflix won't count
against your usage but Hulu does would be a problem.

[0] [http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-music-
streaming.html](http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-music-streaming.html)

~~~
amazon_not
Zero rating is a pox upon the Internet and should be killed with fire,
regardless of any perceived short term benefit to some end users. In the long
term zero rating is always toxic.

There are over 800 telcos in the world. Even if zero rating was free to the
app/service provider, just negotiating with each and every telco would be a
huge burden.

Zero rating is, however, neither free nor available to all app/service
providers. Thus zero rating creates both a toll booth and a gatekeeper who
gets to discriminate against app/service providers and pick winners and
loosers.

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opinsky
what if mobile carriers where not allowed to discriminate whom they could sell
zero-rated services to, so each service provider/app should have the freedom
to choose the business model that works best for themselves?

what if 3rd parties where allowed to buy zero-rated URLs or IPs in "bulk" from
all the carriers in a geography, making it much easier to contract all mobile
carriers?

preventing companies to provide zero-rated services increases the digital
divide as it inhibit people who cannot afford to buy a data plan to use
services. In many areas of the world, the majority of mobile consumers are on
pre-paid plans and have zero credits most of the time (most countries have
calling party pays, so a smartphone with zero credit is still very valuable to
receive calls)

~~~
amazon_not
> what if mobile carriers where not allowed to discriminate whom they could
> sell zero-rated services to, so each service provider/app should have the
> freedom to choose the business model that works best for themselves?

While nominally better, it would just be like putting lipstick on a pig. There
would also be serious real world problems with actually enforing such a
regimen.

> what if 3rd parties where allowed to buy zero-rated URLs or IPs in "bulk"
> from all the carriers in a geography, making it much easier to contract all
> mobile carriers?

My answer is pretty much the same as above, only this one is a bit more
ambitious. It's basically like suggesting world peace as a solution to global
conflicts. Getting all the carriers in a geographic region on board,
implementing, rolling out and enforcing such a thing would almost be an effort
worth a Nobel price in itself.

> preventing companies to provide zero-rated services increases the digital
> divide as it inhibit people who cannot afford to buy a data plan to use
> services. In many areas of the world, the majority of mobile consumers are
> on pre-paid plans and have zero credits most of the time (most countries
> have calling party pays, so a smartphone with zero credit is still very
> valuable to receive calls)

Offering zero rating as a solution to this problem is a false choice. Zero
rating is providing a means of communication for free AND limiting what it can
be used for. The correct choice is to provide the same means of communications
for free and NOT limiting what it can be used for. That is how you remove the
digital divide.

If need be this free mode of communication can be limited by speed or by
amount, as is customary in the mobile world. What is not reasonable is to
limit what can be done with it.

TL;DR zero rating is evil, give users a free tier or quota instead.

