AT&T Will Zero Rate its Upcoming Streaming TV Service, Doesn't Think FCC Will Act

from the one-for-you,-three-for-me dept

We've long noted how the FCC's decision to avoid prohibiting zero rating (exempting your own or a paid partner's content from usage caps) opened the door to letting incumbent ISPs trample net neutrality -- if they're just creative enough about it. And that's precisely what has happened, with Comcast and Verizon now exempting their own content from usage caps, while T-Mobile and Sprint explore throttling all video, games and music unless users pay a $20 to $25 leave me the hell alone fee.

The FCC's total inaction on this front has also emboldened AT&T, which recently began exempting its own DirecTV streaming video app from the company's usage caps while still penalizing customers that use competitors like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon. But as we warned then -- AT&T isn't done. This week it confirmed that it will also zero rate its upcoming DirecTV Now streaming video service, which is AT&T's massive new entry into the streaming video market:

“We’ll be rolling it out in a couple of months,” Stephenson told attendees at an investors conference. “We’re talking 100-plus channels at a very, very aggressive price point. And when you buy this content, the data required to stream it onto your mobile device is incorporated into the price of the content…. If you choose to use that in a mobile environment on AT&T, your data cost is incorporated into your content cost."

That's a pretty clever logical tap dance. AT&T isn't unfairly giving its own content a leg up in the streaming video market, you see, it's just "incorporating" the cost of wireless data into your content costs. Either way you slice it, AT&T is using its stranglehold over the fixed and wireless markets to give its own content an unfair advantage, and you'd be pretty hard pressed to find too many tech beat writers, customers, or regulators that seem to give much of a damn. Why? Because under superficial inspection it looks like customers are getting something for free, even if usage caps are artificial and arbitrary constructs to begin with.

That said, AT&T is making it pretty clear it doesn't think regulators will do much about its latest anti-competitive gambit. Speaking at the recent CTIA wireless trade show in Las Vegas, AT&T Mobility President Glenn Lurie proclaimed that the company isn't worried about a regulatory crackdown:

“We have no regulatory concerns about it. We feel very good about it from that aspect. We’re not prioritizing [data], we’re treating it all the same,” Lurie told FierceWireless here on the sidelines of the CTIA Super Mobility trade show. Lurie is president and CEO of AT&T’s mobility and consumer operations. “So we’re not worried about that.”

Even though AT&T's tactic here is to basically lie and say it's treating "all data the same," it doesn't think the FCC will act. That means it's either emboldened by the FCC's apathy on this front, or it has received private indications from the agency that it doesn't intend to tread into the zero rating waters. But with large, incumbent broadband providers now using their monopoly over the last mile (and spectrum) to give their own content a leg up, you'll soon find many consumers wondering why the hell we have net neutrality rules in the first place.

Filed Under: fcc, net neutrality, streaming tv, zero rating
Companies: at&t