Name: AT&T’s HBO Max Deal Was Never Free
Brand: eff.org
SKU: eff-org-473
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

AT&T’s HBO Max Deal Was Never Free

preview

Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItWhen it launched HBO Max, it that usage of the service would not count against the data caps of&nbsp;AT&amp;T customers, a practice known as “zero-rating.” This means that people on limited data plans could watch as much HBO Max content as they wished without incurring overage fees. AT&amp;T just declared that it would stop this practice, citing California’s net neutrality law as a reason. No matter what spin the telecom giant offers, this does not mean something “free” was taken away. That deal was never free to begin with.It should be noted that net neutrality doesn’t prevent companies from zero rating in a non-discriminatory way. If AT&amp;T wanted to zero rate all video streaming services, it could. What net neutrality laws prevent is ISPs from using their control over Internet access to advantage its own content or charging services for special access to its customer base. In the case of HBO Max and zero rating, since AT&amp;T owns HBO Max, it costs them nothing to zero rate HBO Max. Other services had to pay for the same treatment or be disadvantaged when AT&amp;T customers chose HBO Max to avoid overage fees.This is why AT&amp;T is claiming that it’s being forced to stop offering a “free” service because of California’s net neutrality rule. Rather than admit that the and that perhaps users should determine the entire Internet experience, they want to turn this consumer victory into a defeat. But this basic consumer protection is long overdue having only taken this long because of former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s in 2017, which prompted California to pass S.B. 822 in the first place.American Internet services—mobile and to the home—are vastly more expensive than they should be. We pay more for worse services than in many other countries and practices like zero rating are part of that.A comprehensive showed that after zero rating was banned in the EU, consumers received cheaper mobile data over the years. This is because if the ISP can not do things like drive users towards its verticals through artificial scarcity schemes like data caps, it will need to raise its caps and be less willing to penalize usage of its network simply for using the service they purchased in order to appeal to customers. In fact, the infrastructure being laid out for modern wireless, fiber optics, has so much capacity that data caps really make no sense if the market was more competitive.It is also very important to understand that the cost of moving data is getting cheaper and easier. As we move to fiber-backed infrastructure, the cost of moving data is coming down, speeds are going up exponentially, and the congestion challenges of the early days of the iPhone are a distant memory.As a result, even though moving data is cheaper, AT&amp;T prices haven’t changed accordingly. Profits for the companies grow, but consumers aren’t seeing prices that match the lowering cost of data. You have essentially paid the price of a real unlimited Internet plan for one with data caps, which continue to exist so that telecom companies can charge more for unlimited plans and collect overage fees. We know problem isn’t actual capacity, since at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. If data caps and related data scarcity schemes were necessary for the operation of the network, then a time should have meant AT&amp;T needed to keep its data caps intact and enforce them to keep things running. They didn’t because fiber-connected towers have more than enough capacity to handle growth, unlike .Competition among video streaming services is fierce and should be protected and enhanced. User-generated content on things like Twitch and YouTube, premium content from Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon Prime are all competing for your attention and eyeballs. AT&amp;T wanted to give HBO a leg up by simply making the other services either more expensive via a data cap or to have them pay AT&amp;T to be exempt so even if you were not watching AT&amp;T’s product, money was coming to them. Such a structure makes is impossible for a small independent content creator to be competitive as they lack the resources to pay for an exemption and would need to provide content compelling enough for AT&amp;T customers to pay extra to watch.Furthermore, as the Epicenter.works study discovered, it took a lot of resources from Internet companies to obtain a zero rating exemption making it something only the Googles, Facebooks, and similarly large Internet companies could regularly engage in but not medium to small companies. AT&amp;T doesn’t mind that because it just means more ways to extract rents from more players on the Internet despite being fully compensated by users for an unfettered Internet experience.During the debate in California, AT&amp;T attempted to reframe its zero-rating practice as “free data” and came . But advocates representing the low-income residents of California came out in strong support of the California net neutrality law's zero-rating provisions. Studies by the Pew Research Center showed that when income is limited, consumers as opposed to both wireline and wireless service. Groups like the pointed out that for these low-income users, AT&amp;T was giving them a lesser Internet and not equal access to higher-income users.And that is the ultimate point of net neutrality, to ensure everyone has equal access to the Internet that is free from ISP gatekeeper decisions. When you take into consideration that AT&amp;T is , it starts to make sense why in the absence of federal net neutrality, AT&amp;T started to seek out any and every way to nickel and dime everything that touches its network. But with California’s law starting to come online, users finally have a law that will stand against the effort to convert the Internet into cable television. Whether or not we have federal protection, it seems clear that the states are proving right now that they can be an effective backstop and the work in preserving a free and open Internet will continue not just in DC but in the remaining 49 states.Share ItIn response to the very real pressures that online news outlets are facing, Congress continues to believe the very flawed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) is a magic solution. It is not. In fact, it is actively dangerous. And there’s a available....In May, Senators Mike Lee, Amy Klobuchar, Ted Cruz, and Richard Blumenthal introduced the “.” The bill, also called the “Digital Advertising Act” or just “DAA” for short, is an ambitious attempt to regulate, and even break up, the biggest online advertising companies...Westlaw, the world’s largest legal research service, is very likely to face antitrust liability. A federal court has ruled that ROSS Intelligence, a tiny rival offering new research tools (which Westlaw forced out of business with a copyright infringement suit) could proceed with claims that Westlaw uses exclusionary and anticompetitive...In December, 2020, Apple did something insanely great. They changed how iOS, their mobile operating system, handled users’ privacy preferences, so that owners of iPhones and other iOS devices could indicate that they don’t want to be tracked by any of the apps on their devices. If they did, Apple...The California Senate Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee will soon be the first to consider new and terrible amendments to Assemblymember Quirk-Silva’s A.B. 2749—which is backed by AT&amp;T and other telecommunications interests. The legislation would prohibit the state from implementing affordable broadband rules for broadband companies receiving state subsidies as...The state of California is primed to bring 21st-century fiber access at affordable rates to every Californian. Last year’s means every California community has the resources available to chart a long-term course toward building fiber networks. The Department...There is a lot to appreciate in the recently published “Notice of Funding Opportunity” (NOFO) by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA). It is arguably the first federal government proposal that seeks to promote infrastructure policies focused on the future, rather than the usual subsidizing “good enough...Imagine if your boss made up hundreds of petty rules and refused to disclose them, but every week, your pay was docked based on how many of those rules you broke. When you’re an online creator and your “boss” is a giant social media platform, that’s exactly how your compensation...The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a proposal for bringing competition and fairness back to online platform markets. It just cleared a major hurdle on the way to becoming law in the EU as the European Parliament and the Council, representing the member states, reached a ...The European Union’s (DMA) allows new messaging services to demand interoperability (the ability to exchange messages) from the internet's largest messaging services (like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage). Interoperability is an to promote competition and prevent monopolists from shutting down user-empowering innovation. But...Share It

Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItWhen it launched HBO Max, it that usage of the service would not count against the data caps of&nbsp;AT&amp;T customers, a practice known as “zero-rating.” This means that people on limited data plans could watch as much HBO Max content as they wished without incurring overage fees. AT&amp;T just declared that it would stop this practice, citing California’s net neutrality law as a reason. No matter what spin the telecom giant offers, this does not mean something “free” was taken away. That deal was never free to...

public

Katharine Trendacosta

Ernesto Falcon

We're the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We defend your civil liberties in a digital world.

AT&T’s HBO Max Deal Was Never Free

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS