[danieltillett]

I am not sure why businesses paying the data charges of their customers is a violation of net neutrality? It might be anti-competitive and an abuse of market power, but unless the traffic was prioritized over other traffic how is this a violation of net neutrality?

[Perdition]

Large telecom companies ran a fairly effective campaign confusing people about what net neutrality was actually about.

I've heard all kinds of silly things like net neutrality wouldn't allow end-user set QOS. Or that it wouldn't allow ISPs to throttle people who exceed "acceptable use" limits.

As for the proposal in the OP I don't see the issue with it. Plenty of companies make arrangements (usually physical co-location of servers) with ISPs so that certain content doesn't count against users data caps.

That could get abusive if the ISP had a very low data cap but coincidentally services also owned by the ISP were off cap. But in most situations they are just giving you something extra, not taking away as ISPs were doing with targeted throttling.

[denzil_correa]

> I am not sure why businesses paying the data charges of their customers

This is a HUGE assumption. I would go out on a limb to say that that's what is happening. Consider this - an telecom firm named "UnfAir Tel" and e-commerce firm called "Glitch Kart" enter into a zero rating deal. Now, Glitch Kart is asked to pay UnfAir Tel some money to be called a Zero partner. Glitch Kart passes on these costs to the consumer (on every product) - minute costs like 20c per product. So consumers now pay to keep Glitch Kart accessible without Internet AND UnfAirTel for providing NO extra service.

> It might be anti-competitive and an abuse of market power, but unless the traffic was prioritized over other traffic how is this a violation of net neutrality?

I think the Norwegian Communications Authority explains this best.

> At first glance it may appear that all traffic is handled equally in this charging model, but the fact is that once you have used your quota, the traffic that is exempted will be allowed to continue, while all other traffic will be throttled or blocked. This is clearly a case of discrimination between different types of traffic.

http://eng.nkom.no/topical-issues/news/net-neutrality-and-ch...

[Xixi]

If I understand correctly, someone out of data on his/her plan will be able to access data from some businesses (who pay for the data), and not from other "normal" businesses.

So in a sense it's a form of binary prioritization: 0 or 1.

[danieltillett]

It isn't a violation of net neutrality if I don't pay my cable bills and so get cut off. I am not suggesting that it is a good idea for companies to abuse their market power, but it is not an abuse of net neutrality to pay someone else's bill.

[wpietri]

Having no service does not violate net neutrality. But net neutrality is violated when ISPs provide selective service based on who pays them the most. If packets are delivered differently based on business relationships, then it's not a neutral network.

What's being described here is much more akin to cable, where many channels pay for access to consumers.

[b0sk]

Well, from what I understand, they have a Whatsapp package for example where using whatsapp doesn't count towards the bandwidth cap. This is what opponents of NN want.

[shubhamjain]

One thing to be noted is, Airtel has always been pioneer of skewed business tactics to milk as much profit they can. I can't believe that even in this age, I can't have more than 1Mbps speed beyond their incredibly low FUP (Fair Usage policy).

I have seen charges of 2G data double in course of last two years or so. The picture, if Airtel goes through it, is very grim. They would force every major corporation to pay to allow access to their website / app for 'free' and the normal Internet packs would become very expensive to afford. I am sure most telcos would follow the same suit, once they get a nod.

[6d0debc071]

The concern, presumably, is that customers who receive their data for free with respect to a certain number of applications will have less of an incentive to place themselves in the position whereby they pay for the data and can access the Internet as a whole. It would, in effect, be a way of imposing asymmetrical data patterns through incentivising selective aspects of consumer behaviour.

[danieltillett]

Yes I can see it is anti-competitive and may not be in the general good, but I don't see how it a violation of net neutrality?

[6d0debc071]

If you think of the bandwidth/latency of not being connected to the Internet as zero, and think of the bandwidth/latency of being connected to the Internet as some nonzero value, then this is a difference of degree, and not of type, with any other net neutrality discussion we might have. Net neutrality would dictate that you cannot charge differently for different streams of data. Here, the cost to the user with respect to a certain set of streams would be zero in one case and some non-zero value in another case.

Now, one could argue that it is not a violation of net neutrality because the data is still being paid for – it is simply being paid for by another source. However, I find these arguments unconvincing. If the intention of net neutrality had simply been to ensure that data was paid for, then it would not matter if data was treated better or worse based upon some payment of a company. After all, the data would still be being paid for – it would simply be that some data was being paid to have faster service associated with it. In principle, that latter example would be no different to an end user of the ISP paying for a faster connection.