
Too Little Too Late: FCC Finally Realizes AT&T's Zero Rating Is Anti-Competitive - doener
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20161111/08192636020/too-little-too-late-fcc-finally-realizes-ats-zero-rating-is-anti-competitive.shtml
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trhway
>FCC's decision not to ban zero rating (or the practice of exempting some
content from usage caps) when crafting net neutrality rules ... As a result,
despite having net neutrality rules, we now have companies like AT&T, Verizon
and Comcast all exempting their own streaming content from the caps ...

the network is equally neutral to all content, to some content it is just more
neutral.

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int_handler
By definition, that is not neutral.

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luhn
He was making a reference to Animal Farm, I believe.
[http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6466-all-animals-are-
equal-b...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6466-all-animals-are-equal-but-
some-animals-are-more-equal)

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bediger4000
Doesn't "zero rating" make an obvious lie out of data caps?

That is, I could stream "zero rated" bits all day, and not touch my "cap". If
I stream regular bits all day, suddenly, I've hit my "cap".

Why do "zero rated" bits not cause congestion, etc etc, like the regular bits?

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jordonwii
I'm going to play devil's advocate here, but there might be legitimate
technical reasons - streaming from your ISP's network may actually be easier
on the network (it doesn't require inter-network hops, or maybe, since they
control the content, they can cache it closer to the edge, etc.).

There may also be financial reasons - if people are paying them for a separate
streaming service, then it's easier to justify investments in infrastructure
to reduce the congestion from that service.

That assumes that the congestion isn't at the edge/CO/etc. If it is, then I
don't know how to justify it, except as a way to get people using their
service, which is obviously part of it, either way.

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bediger4000
All good points, thank you. It's just hard to believe that the
ISP/entertainment conglomerate's own bits have zero size in terms of
congestion - somewhat smaller size, yes, but zero size? No.

