Verizon Gives Net Neutrality A Giant Middle Finger, Exempts Own Video Service From Wireless Usage Caps
from the ill-communication dept
In 2010, Verizon successfully sued to demolish the FCC's original net neutrality rules. In 2015, Verizon joined the rest of the industry in helping launch a barrage of lawsuits to try kill and kill a more legally-sound and updated version of those same rules. While that case continues through the courts, Verizon has made it clear that 2016 will be the year the telco raises a giant middle finger to the FCC and net neutrality supporters alike.The company sent an e-mail to Verizon Wireless customers this week informing them that using the carrier's Millennial-focused Go90 streaming video service will no longer count against the company's mobile broadband usage caps. As in, Verizon has decided to give its own streaming video service an incredibly unfair advantage over any rival services. According to an updated customer agreement website, the change in policy only occurred this week after the company updated the company's app to version 1.4:
"Beginning on or about February 4, 2016, if you are a Verizon Wireless post-paid customer and you download the current version of go90 (release 1.4), you can watch any video on go90 without incurring Verizon Wireless data usage charges so long as you are connected to LTE. Other activity that does not involve watching videos, such as downloading go90 from an app store, browsing or searching for shows, posting comments, sharing clips and viewing settings will incur data usage charges."Verizon's decision to zero rate its own streaming video services comes on the heels of the company's launch of something it's calling "Free Bee sponsored data." Under that program, companies can pay Verizon to have specific content (like a single video) or entire websites or apps cap-exempted. Between Free Bee and this week's announcement, Verizon's apparently decided to show the public just how little of a shit it gives about net neutrality advocate concerns.
Of course Verizon's simply following on the heels of related zero rating efforts by AT&T, Comcast, and T-Mobile. AT&T's been testing a sponsored data program for a few years now. T-Mobile's Binge On service exempts streaming video services from the company's usage caps, throttling all services to 1.5 Mbps by default. Comcast's also gotten in on the game, exempting its own streaming video service from the company's slowly-expanding usage caps.
We've noted for some time how the practice of zero rating is an absolutely horrible precedent, given that by giving some deeper-pocketed services a leg up, you're automatically putting smaller companies, startups, non-profits, and educational services at a distinct disadvantage. While T-Mobile may have opened the door with a program that skirts the edges of good taste, Comcast and Verizon have walked right through the door, and are downright laughing in the face of net neutrality by exempting their own services from caps.
And again, so far the FCC has done little more than nod dumbly as companies make a mockery of the idea of an open, level Internet. While the FCC says it has fired off some "informal," low-level inquiries asking carriers for more detail, the agency has given absolutely no serious indication that it intends to thwart the practice of zero rating any time soon. The irony of course is that as Verizon's tries to shed its reputation as a stodgy old phone company by desperately wooing Millennials, it's making it abundantly clear the company just can't seem to shed Ma Bell era behavior.
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Filed Under: exempt, fcc, go90, net neutrality, streaming video, zero rating
Companies: verizon
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Who is regulating whom here?
FCC. GROW. A. SPINE!
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Grow a spine:
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Re:
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Re: Re:
T-Mobile should just remove their caps if they are truly allowing all video and music services. But they aren't. They are doing it this way to make it look more friendly to the rules, it seems it is working as they have you fooled.
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No Suprise
I am going to believe it when I fucking see it... and the rest of you little 'regulation' fanboi's can just keep bitching about wanting more regulation that will not work until someone grows a fucking spine and tells congress... fix the problem or else.
Not even in the American People... can a spine be found.
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Re: No Suprise
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Re: Re: No Suprise
The first is a lazy electorate that cannot be bothered to vote out their favorite congressional turd.
The second is an electorate that thoroughly enjoys government corruption because it does serve them in the districts that they voted in their favorite turd.
It is clear that the American People care not so long as they get some sort of scraps from the table. We all have long forgotten what it means for government to say no... we should not be managing or regulating that.
It never ceases to amaze me that people will beg for regulation then expect to not lose any liberty over it, and even worse... expect for government which is usually what caused the problem to begin with to cure it with said regulation!
Government is an entity that eternally causes MORE problems than it will ever solve, but you will never get the ignorant masses to ever understand it!
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Re: Re: Re: No Suprise
I've lost track of when I had an actual candidate who was worth anything to vote for. I feel like I'm voting for the lesser of evils. And that's when I have an actual choice; a few times only the incumbent was on the ballot.
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Re: Re: Re: No Suprise
If it was possible to vote someone out you'd have a stronger argument. But you can't, you can only hope to vote a different turd in, who may be worse.
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Re: No Suprise
"Hey, congress, we know that you rake in tons of money from the cable companies, who donate lavishly to a good number of you, but we'd like you to write up the laws keeping abuse by the cable companies down.
Now we know this will almost certainly impact their potential profits by setting in place limits to curtail their more obvious abuses, and they will almost certainly threaten if not actually withhold donations from those politicians that do this, but we trust that you'll look past the significant loss of money to do the right thing by the american public.
P.S. And pretty please don't take this opportunity to make 'rules' that are pathetically weak, and basically allow the cable companies to do whatever they want, and/or defund the government agencies that are supposed to enforce the rules such that it doesn't matter if the cable companies do violate them, they can't be investigated or prosecuted for their violations."
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Re: Re: No Suprise
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governmental instability
I have always hoped that the projection was wrong and that we will make the needed corrections before we see a crash. I still hope so, although that doesn't make what I see any less scary.
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Re: governmental instability
He compared the current campaigns as legal bribery and said he would never have made president in the current state of things.
It sounds like your friends analysis was correct.
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Re: Re: governmental instability
It costs such a massive amount that anyone who makes it into office pretty much has to sell out to large companies to get the money to have done so, and once they're in office those companies want a return on their 'investment', and if they don't get it then they're not likely to spend any money come next election.
Though I'm sure the idea could use some hefty tweaking, a general idea to fix this would be to make it so that election funds were anonymized and generalized, such that you could donate to election funds in general, but the various candidates would all draw from the same pool.
The idea has got some hefty flaws to be sure, the first among them being that given 'money is speech' for all intents and purposes these days it would have a high likelihood of causing people's 'speech' to support those that they themselves do not, but the general idea, that of making it as difficult as possible for companies to basically by politicians buy bankrolling their elections I'd think is a sound one.
Take the requirement to pander to large companies if you want to get elected out of the equation, and you take a large part of the motivation on both sides to do so.
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Re: Re: Re: No Suprise
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Re: Re: Re: Re: No Suprise
Not useless, just difficult. There are plenty of things we could do to mitigate corruption. The problem is, those that have the ability to mitigate the corruption are they themselves corrupt. Not to worry. The people will get sick of it eventually and restore the balance, but if history is any indicator, it's going to be very painful time when it happens.
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Re: No Suprise
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I know it's wishful thinking
"Oh look, the FCC left out this big pile of rope. Let's all go take as much as we can."
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It's Just a Simple Misunderstanding, Really
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IF
This is simply an exercise in market power using artificial scarcity to jack up prices.
But then that is what media companies have been doing for 300+ years now it's not new.
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Wash, rinse, repeat
Seriously thought... it's hard to see that the various companies feel that they can offer "over the top" services which do not count against bandwidth. If they didn't think they had a legal leg to start on, they might not be going here, at least without so much enthusiasm.
My take is that the amount of bandwidth available is a contractual issue and not a neutrality issue. If you can reach all sites without impairment, the meaning and core of net neutrality has been met. That your service contract my only let you stream a half a dozen movies a month in that amount of bandwidth is not a neutrality issue.
Over the top zero rating services (especially those with an additional price tag on them) are not against neutrality, not any more than selling extra bandwidth or even having a more expensive unlimited plan. It's a consumers choice at that point.
There is a point where it's just a business and consumer choice to offer services beyond just a pipe.
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Re: Wash, rinse, repeat
"If they didn't think they had a legal leg to start on ... "
Yeah - sort of like the bankers who thought they had a "legal leg" to launder drug money. Perhaps the term legal leg means inside connections? Because we all know there were no bankers investigated much less prosecuted.
"the amount of bandwidth available is a contractual issue and not a neutrality issue"
Perhaps you do not understand what the neutrality issue is about?
" If you can reach all sites without impairment, the meaning and core of net neutrality has been met"
Really?
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Re: Wash, rinse, repeat
Way I see it, net neutrality at the core can be summed up as follows:
All sites, and all data, are treated the same, such that data from site A is treated the same as data from site B. Doesn't matter what the site is, what the data is, it receives the same treatment when it's being transferred over the network, taking only into account the ability of the network to handle the traffic in question.
Given the above, zero-rating is a direct violation of net neutrality, as it allows the ISP's to treat data/sites differently at their whim, or more often based upon who paid them. No longer are A and B treated the same, now one can have special benefits over the other, allowing it to get a competitive advantage simply because it was willing and/or able to pay more to the ISP.
Over the top zero rating services (especially those with an additional price tag on them) are not against neutrality, not any more than selling extra bandwidth or even having a more expensive unlimited plan. It's a consumers choice at that point.
No, it's not, because the consumer isn't the one deciding which sites get the special treatment, the ISP is.
A customer deciding to pay more for a faster connection is a 'consumer choice'.
A customer deciding to pay more for more monthly data to increase the (artificial) data cap is a 'consumer choice'.
An ISP deciding what sites and/or services don't count towards that cap based upon which ones paid them is not a 'consumer choice'.
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Re: Re: Wash, rinse, repeat
One provider had a deal with one of the television networks and another with the other one. When we had data caps it could affect your monthly bill if you used one of these providers, or didn't. But now it is very cheap to get an unlimited connection and zero rating is no longer a selling point for any of the providers.
(copied and pasted from the post about India - which is having an identical argument)
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Re: Re: Re: Wash, rinse, repeat
My take is that both of these are problems. You can have no caps whatsoever, but if you're trying to stream video and your mobile provider is artificially hobbling your speed, you're not going to be too pleased.
I'm also non US but take an interest in these goings on, partly because of US dominance, partly because corporate dickery travels well.
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Re: Wash, rinse, repeat
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Re: Re: Wash, rinse, repeat
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Re: Wash, rinse, repeat
Coming from the jackass troll who writes almost the same troll bs every day, that's a bold and hilarious statement.
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Verizon vs Net Neutrality
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go90 - Really?
(Disclaimer: I'm a retired VzW employee. We got absorbed, then later on my area got shut down. They did try to give us a place to go, but NJ is not my cup of tea.)
I would strongly suggest that EVERYONE go to go90, find the longest video they can, put it on CONTINUOUS or LOOP if possible, and play it while charging up the phone at night.
After all, it's dark and "Go90 no longer counts against usage caps" -- you need a good night light to scare away all of the scary monsters out there. What better way to scare a monster away than with another one?
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This whole thing indicates that VzW considers "airwaves/4G" and internal network routing not to be a problem, it's data egress to "the proper internet" that is costly and must be controlled.
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You've got it all wrong!
You see, Verizon has developed a smaller byte! They've taken a bit or two out of it, due to Turing Completeness. That makes their streaming formats much smaller than other vendors, who still use the gross old "fat bytes", which have 8-bits each.
Silly, people, Ma Bell knows best!
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Re: You've got it all wrong!
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Normal tax rates for ISPs with no data cap, but still zero rate infrastructure improvements.
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And the bad part is that their opponents are playing right into it--including Techdirt.
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Verizon vs Net Neutrality
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