Comment by will_hughes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by will_hughes | Hacker News Reader

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The argument for prohibiting zero-rating under NN generally goes like this:

If provider X provides a very limited (or no) quota for regular internet traffic, and provides access to sponsored zero-rated services - then this inhibits competition, and (depending on how agressively it's implmented) can inhibit free speech.

This has been seen seen in some countries such as India where facebook.com was zero-rated traffic, and data prices for regular internet access were extremely high.

It's also seen today in Australia where Apple Music, Spotify and Google Play Music services are zero-rated traffic on certain mobile (cellular) plans - many of these plans also have zero-rated access to various popular social media platforms too (facebook, instagram, etc) - and data quotas are generally fairly limited (2-10GB/month is typical for mid-range plans). A competitor to these services is going to have a very hard time entering the market, since their customers will all have the data usage come out of their regular quota.

Continuing with Australia - Most ISPs provide zero-rated access to Netflix (or provide 'unlimited' quota). Telstra does not zero-rate Netflix traffic, but they do zero-rate Foxtel and their own movie/tv services. At the same time, having rather low data quotas.

So those who're stuck with Telstra (eg because they live in an apartment/development that is a Telstra-exclusive estate, or just because they're on a 24-36 month contract, having been unaware of the problems) - are unable to use Netflix.

With Australia, submarine transport costs to Singapore (nearest 'major' Internet hub) or all the way to North America or Europe for the largest hubs is an order of magnitude more expensive than continental terrestrial transport within North America or within Europe. So that Netflix offers free caching boxes to ISP's meeting minimum traffic levels allows the Australian networks to save substantially on their overall bandwidth costs. It's reasonable for them to zero-rate that traffic as they're effectively passing their cost savings on to their customers, as opposed to trying to double dip by charging content networks for access to their subscribers. This may violate more pure definitions of net neutrality, but should be desirable behaviour as it's pro consumer.

This goes back to the distinction between the real problem, the lack of competition in many markets compared to net neutrality which mitigates situations where there's a lack of competition, but it's not necessarily a win all across the board. What's needed is to separate last mile access, from eyeball network service, from carrier network service, from content network service, from actual content. This would ensure competition across the board, and prevent excessive power accumulated by such a small number of large corporations as is currently the case. However, the nearly religious reverence to capitalism in the US would make such a solution nearly impossible to legislate.

> With Australia, submarine transport costs to Singapore (nearest 'major' Internet hub)

There's very little direct bandwidth to Singapore - there's only one cable going west (SEA-ME-WE-3), it's old, and constantly has breaks.

Unless you live in Western Australia, your traffic (even to Singapore) doesn't go via that - it goes via the US over SXC or Endeavor to the east, or to the north to Guam (PIPE-1) or Japan (AJC)

> It's reasonable for them to zero-rate that traffic as they're effectively passing their cost savings on to their customers, as opposed to trying to double dip by charging content networks for access to their subscribers. This may violate more pure definitions of net neutrality, but should be desirable behaviour as it's pro consumer.

I agree, however I've had (heated) arguments with people on this aspect. Not everyone agrees, and thinks that all traffic should be zero-rated if any traffic is going to be.

If that were the cause, then all ISPs would provide zero rating for netflix. Instead, only certain ISPs zero rate netflix, suggesting that those ISPs are being payed to do this.

T-Mobile zero rates in the US as a technical measure, and all content that adheres to their technical requirements is eligible for zero rating (even adult content).

Are you talking about the Binge-On service[1]? That's an optional service on both the customer and provider side.

Either way, there's no additional charges on the customer or provider side.

[1] https://www.t-mobile.com/offer/binge-on-streaming-video.html

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