[tzs]

Isn't low speed steady traffic easier for the network to handle than bursty high speed traffic? Someone streaming music for 8 hours will use about a gigabyte of data total but only needs a 256 kbits/second connection. The network could deliver that over older 3g infrastructure.

The same thing could be accomplished without zero-rating if they made their data plans something like N gig of high speed data and unlimited low speed data, and then the phones provided some way for applications to specify whether a given connection should use high speed data or low speed data.

For some applications that would be easier for the developer. Music streaming apps could always ask for a low speed connection. But what about file download apps? Whether they should use my limited high speed data or my unlimited low speed data is probably not something the app can determine on its own, because it depends on how much of a hurry I'm in. So a lot of apps would probably need to expose this decision making to the user.

That wouldn't have any net neutrality issues, but I bet it would be a UI nightmare.

(Actually a lot of carriers do kind of do that. A lot of unlimited plans are N gigs high speed unlimited low speed, except rather than trying to optimize which is used on a per connection basis it simply uses high speed until you've run out and then uses low speed for the rest of the month).