T-Mobile And MetroPCS Go All In On The Horrible Precedent Of Zero Rating

from the setting-the-stage-for-disaster dept

Last year we noted that for being such a supposedly cool CEO, T-Mobile’s John Legere seemed utterly clueless on the subject of net neutrality. Not only did the CEO claim that Title II and new net neutrality rules would “kill innovation” (tip: that didn’t happen), he seemed totally oblivious to the bad precedent set by the company’s zero rating efforts. Those efforts began with T-Mobile’s decision to let some music services bypass user usage caps, which as we’ve discussed at great length puts smaller companies and non-profits at a distinct disadvantage.

But since our regulators (and much of the press and public) seem clueless to the harm of zero rating so far, T-Mobile has decided to expand these efforts. Last week the company started cap-exempting video services, and now the company has announced it’s bringing zero rating to the company’s prepaid wireless brand (MetroPCS) as well. Now the company’s prepaid and postpaid (monthly billed) customers both will find that thirty-three of the biggest music stream services no longer count against their usage caps (yeah, sorry, small independent radio streaming stations too little to get on T-Mobile’s whitelisted radar).

As usual, the move was framed as a huge boon to consumers:

?Once again we are setting MetroPCS apart from the rest of the pack in ways that no one else will,? said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile US. ?MetroPCS is the #1 brand in prepaid because we keep giving customers more of what they want, and today that means adding Music Unlimited and Data Maximizer to the list! Their data will last longer than ever before without ridiculous penalty fees or trickery!”

And like regulators, most of the telecom beat covering T-Mobile has been oblivious to the bad precedent set. They don’t quite yet understand that letting a wireless carrier suddenly decide what traffic gets whitelisted from already-arbitrary usage restrictions sets the stage for a total upheaval of how the Internet works now. They also don’t understand that if it’s ok for T-Mobile to do this, it’s ok for a company like AT&T to do something similar — and AT&T’s version is going to be notably worse. The Los Angeles Times, for example, struggles to see where the problem lies:

“Besides, there’s nothing in the FCC’s neutrality rules that bars data caps, which enable carriers to segment the market and charge higher prices to those who put a higher value on bandwidth. Binge On represents another reduction in the pain caused by data caps, which seems like an unalloyed good thing for consumers.”

But you’re not reducing a “pain point” by creating an arbitrary data cap, then letting some content bypass that cap — you’re just getting in the way of a healthy Internet ecosystem. And just because the FCC lacked the foresight to prohibit zero rating in our net neutrality rules (unlike Chile, Norway, Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Japan, which all bar zero rating), that doesn’t mean this isn’t a potentially horrible idea that’s going to change the face of the Internet. It’s very clear that the perils of zero rating are something we’re eager to experience first hand here in the States, applauding our own “great fortune” all the way.

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Companies: metropcs, t-mobile

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Comments on “T-Mobile And MetroPCS Go All In On The Horrible Precedent Of Zero Rating”

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18 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

It’s not all video (or music), it’s just approved sources.

I can’t setup my own server to string audio/video to my phone… and have it be cap-exempt. I have even emailed T-mobile to find out what they recommend for people who have collections of music that aren’t on itunes or other “approved” streaming sites, and they had no response.

Chris Brand says:

It's like a 3rd-party paywall

“You can visit these sites for free. For the rest, your first few visits are free but then you have to pay-per-view”.
That would be fine if it were the sites themselves that choose whether to put up the paywall or not, but it’s problem when it’s somebody else doing so.

The difficulty is that they started off with “Your first few visits are free, but then it’s pay-per-view” and then added “you can visit these sites for free” afterwards, so it’s not nearly as obvious.

Kal Zekdor (profile) says:

Curing congestion...

Glad somebody else gets why these zero-rating programs are not pro-consumer.

Data caps are completely arbitrary, with the sole purpose of bilking every last dollar from customers. As I’ve said elsewhere, lauding T-Mobile for these moves is like thanking someone for only punching you once. Yeah, he could have punched you twice, but that’s not really a good deed.

There’s a better way to deal with congestion (fairly) if the telcos actually cared. You just need to throttle the heavier users on towers approaching capacity. Bandwidth not used is wasted. There’s no reason to place a cap on data transferred when what you’re trying to balance is bandwidth.

T-Mobile already has mechanisms in place to throttle certain users. They just need to make it dynamic in response to current load. When load is light, everyone gets full speed without arbitrary caps. When load approaches capacity, those users who have historically added the most load get throttled down.

Solves congestion, no arbitrary caps, and fairly allocates bandwidth between heavy/light users.

Oh, one other thing. The Binge On program lowers the quality of any zero-rated video. So claiming that it’s an improvement for customers is rather disingenuous. It’s a trade-off, at best. (And only because customers can opt-out.)

Anonymous Coward says:

How is this network neutral?

How they think:

Just to be fair, we’ll set a baseline to overcharge for everything. So we’re neutral, see? Oh, but then we’ll exempt our “friends”. But don’t worry, we’ll still be “fair”. Almost anyone can become our friend for the right amount of money. What could be more fair and neutral that that?

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