That practice is called zero-rating, and the reason T-Mobile’s Music Freedom and Binge On initiatives have thus far escaped FCC scrutiny is likely twofold: The services included are not owned by T-Mobile, and T-Mobile is receiving no payment from the services to zero-rate their traffic.
If Verizon were to start a large-scale, first-party zero-rating scheme, I have to think there would be at least some calls for FCC action. And given that Wheeler’s FCC actually passed Title II, there is the real potential of an actual regulatory stick being wielded against Verizon.
Comcast is running around Net Neutrality with their new Stream TV service. It uses their cable network to stream to your IP devices and it won't count against your cap like using every other IP streaming service will.
Overall this needs to be stopped, it's highly anti-competitive! If it walks and quacks like a duck it's a duck.
Economics interprets law as damage and routes around it. The only way to preserve "net neutrality" is for most people's actual usage to rely on the long tail of P2P or at least P-2-cottageindustry, opaque to the network provider. Once "the Internet" is effectively just centralized "channels" like Google/Facebook/Netflix/etc, it's only a matter of time until business runs its age-old playbook and coalesces power.
It is already common in other countries. I was in South America last week and saw ads for a wireless service there (Claro) advertising "free WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter and/or [streaming music service, can't recall the name] doesn't count against your data cap."
No - they aren't gimping specific competitors or doing anything to filter data over public internet - they are offering a new tier of service - just like you have IPTV as a separate service from public internet.
And why should the government care ? Who is getting hurt here ? Not to mention there are multiple competing entities in mobile space.
We have something similar arround here with 0.facebook.com where you get free access to mobile FB version over 3G even on prepaid cards - it's popular with younger people - why should this be illegal ?
There are many, many many content providers and only a relative few ISPs. It would be pretty easy for ISP's to coordinate or even just act independently and abuse their oligopoly status and extort money from content providers who don't have the same leverage they do.
So what ? New businesses are always getting hurt by successful vertical integration because it increases efficiency through methods they can't match - as long as there is no monopoly the government should not care - it's role is to protect consumers from monopoly behaviour - not help sprout new business by preventing optimization.
If Verizon were to start a large-scale, first-party zero-rating scheme, I have to think there would be at least some calls for FCC action. And given that Wheeler’s FCC actually passed Title II, there is the real potential of an actual regulatory stick being wielded against Verizon.