The popular Internet provider Verizon has
recently been playing a role in the increasing pressure on net neutrality. This
issue has been very relevant in the recent years as providers have started to
micro manage data usage of individual customers. In the instance of the article
Verizon is not counting data usage towards the customers data cap unless the
service is strictly white listed, also known as 'zero rating'.
While reading the article I found that they
touched on a few important concepts worth mentioning. The very first being what
exactly zero rating was. I am a customer of an Internet provider and not having
any prior knowledge of it made me turn my head. For example, if a user were to
stream Netflix they would not be charged for any data coming from that specific
service. Verizon has announced that their new service Go90 will not count
towards any data cap. The issue is that this is against traditional network
neutrality but isn't against the FCC ruling on the matter. Although they pass
FCC regulation they're still managing each company individually to ensure that
no other laws are broken. It is stated that some would agree that regardless of
programs allowing services to participate in zero-rating it's technically
illegal. In other words providers prioritize commercially licensed material
over other forms of media.
The article also discussed the relevance of the
many available streaming services. I feel that with the increasing amount of
streaming services there needs to be some incentives for a company to survive.
I understand that it's not technically illegal for a company to prioritize
their own services but I do feel as if it can be unfair. The only way I feel
that this could be fair is if a company offers the ability for other services
to participate in zero rating. Without the ability for companies to get around
data costs I feel that it should be considered illegal. Although it was not
mentioned in the article I would also agree that providers should not have the
ability to throttle the data coming from other services to further promote
their own.
Another point worth mentioning is that under it
all the companies don't seem to be attempting to undermine the FCC. The
companies seem to be very customer friendly and have high ratings to prove that
statement. Even if the providers don't explicitly explain the existence of zero-rating
it doesn't seem to have a major effect on the likeliness of the customer
choosing another service.
Overlooked by the article might be that fact that Internet providers
without their own streaming service still have full control over data speeds
and other connection factors. Data that might support the information stated in
the article like prices and other details may have contributed to general
argument of the article.
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/verizons-new-video-service-tests-net-neutrality-laws/
Hey Nick,
ReplyDeleteI think this was a very interesting article that focused on the ideas of net neutrality and ‘zero rating’. I am a customer of Verizon and was unaware of the concept of ‘zero rating’. I like the use of incentives by Verizon as a way of competition with the other data companies. It is smart for them to promote this feature of no data costs for streaming sites such as Netflix because people start using the free streaming from Verizon no matter what data company they have. This actually makes the customers of other data companies lose money because they are not fully using their features of their data company to the max. When their contracts expire they feel an obligation to switch to Verizon because they already use some of their services and feel comfortable with the data company. I agree with your opinion that the article overlooked the fact that no prices were named. I feel like if it included prices throughout the article I would better be able to see the impact of staying with the current data company or switching to Verizon. I would also like to see the success of this new innovation by Verizon. I would like to see the percentages of people who switched over to Verizon or who stayed with their current company since this innovation was implemented. I think it is an interesting idea and very clever by Verizon to market their data by making it free to customers.