Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
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Re: Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
#2Personally, 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.
Re: Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
#3Personally, 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 ag…
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.
Re: Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
#4A 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.
Re: Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
#5Personally, 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 ag…
Without zero-rating, ISPs still have a strong incentive to make the effort to peer with service providers because it cuts their transit costs.
The article points out the big downside: Zero rating takes away a strong incentive to raise bandwidth caps, as low bandwidth caps makes it more attractive for content providers to negotiate zero-rating deals.
The net result is a market heavily distorted in favour of a small set of major content providers.
> it discourages passing on savings made by peering with companies to consumers.
Cellphone data costs rarely have much relation to transit cost. Ex. my provider in the UK offers 2GB at 20 pounds a month. The actual data cost from a really expensive transit provider in a non-carrier neutral data centre for 2GB is about 7p. 0.07 pounds.... With some peering, decent volume, and sourcing bandwidth in a carrier neutral location where there's decent competition would bring that down to a tiny fraction.
Re: Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
#6Personally, 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 ag…
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.
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.
Re: Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
#7I'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.
Re: Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
#8Personally, 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 ag…
To give some context, zero rating in Australia came about as a response by smaller ISPs to the 'Gang of Four' 'cartel' of large telcos, who have settlement-free domestic peering between themselves[1], and until ~2009-2010, had a monopoly over international transit (via ownership of submarine cables to the US)
Australia is a country which imports the majority of its content (submarine cables are not cheap), so smaller ISPs have an incentive to direct eyeballs to 'friendly' content sources - those who peer at major peering exchanges locally, or directly.
At least with the independent providers, this has been used for good - unmetered Linux mirrors, Steam, Netflix - as these providers do not have any content of their own, unlike Telstra (who holds 50% of Foxtel, alongside Newscorp).
[1] this 'cartel' was created under pressure of the competition regulator/ACCC in the late '90s, ironically. The criteria isn't based on any merit, just the largest market share holders at the time.
Re: Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 doe…
Well, either caps serve a point or they don't.
If they do (by incentivizing people to conserve bandwidth on, say, mobile connections) then they need to be consistently enforced, with no exceptions.
If they don't serve a purpose for consumers then they should be abolished anyway.
If Spotify and WIMP use equal amounts of data then they should cost you, the consumer, the same in transfer costs. Anything else just ends up with all consumers subsidizing the incumbents no matter what vendors they choose (like the often criticized "Microsoft tax"), unless they only go with startups that do not have these agreements in place (yet).
> 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.
Oh yeah, let's never try to improve things in new markets that work differently.
Re: Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 doe…
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.