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by hueving 2692 days ago
>Also keep in mind that zero rating is itself an explicit admission that network capacity and overhead aren't factors in the price.

No, that's not what that means. You can easily take special means to get direct peering to zero rated partners or install CDNs so that zero rated traffic does have any impact on peering links. Congestion at the last mile is only a small part of what an ISP deals with.
2 comments
scarface74 2692 days ago
For wireless carriers it’s all about the last mile. You can only get a certain amount of data within a certain amount of spectrum. Yeah I know I’m butchering the explanation. It’s been over 20 years since I studied it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theore...

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proofofconcept 2692 days ago
If zero rating wasn't allowed then the ISP would still be doing that sort of thing with popular content providers anyway, just the ones that their users prefer instead of the ones their users are being railroaded onto by the ISP itself, so as far as I'm concerned it's a wash.
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