Comment by Brotkrumen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Brotkrumen | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think they're after customer money. They want service provider money.

If what telekom is trying in germany is a any indication, the plan is to move all traffic to the BingeOn mode. After that, they degrade services that are not paying them and zero-rate + allow higher bitrates for services that pay them.

But "paying" is not cash if the talk in our startup scene is to be believed. Telekom is pulling out of startup incubating (after failing miserably) and are trying to use their position as an intermediary to get equity off of every new startup.

How? Imagine a new startup "meflixtube": growth is good, funding is secured, everything looks great. Telekom notices and says "would be a shame if something degrading would happen to your service, ey? give us a few percent of equity and you'll get zero-rated, undegraded access to our customers". Now instead of getting a few $$$, they are in line to get a few 100 million $$$ when a few of the new startups take off. They can even make sure that the startups they have "convinced" don't get any competition by refusing the same deal to competitors.

tl;dr: Telekom is not after customer money, their customer base is the market they "offer" to companies and zero-rated, undegraded data is their gate.

This is spot on, and it's why "free" offerings are still a major net neutrality worry. Even if there's nothing underhanded going on with them initially, it sets the stage for trouble.

I find "proprietary technology" claims amusing because to me that is such an obviously bad thing, and bragging about it is like General Mills bragging that every box of Wheaties is contaminated with mercury and PCBs.

To play devil's advocate here, does this mean companies shouldn't even offer time-limited freebies (e.g. promotional offerings "Buy 2 data packages for the price of 1! Limited Time offer!")?

Or is the worry that only indefinitely free offerings can set the stage for trouble later? To me both viewpoints set the stage for trouble, except the indefinite free offering is a darker shade of gray.

The issue isn't free/paid, but variations in communications service performance based on the content of the communications or the parties involved.

Yes, exactly. I didn't mean to say that all "free" things are a net neutrality problem, only that policies which affect different traffic differently are still problematic when they're free.

For example, if T-Mobile started charging $10/month to access Spotify on their network, that's an obvious net neutrality problem. What I'm saying is that if T-Mobile lets you access Spotify for free on their network, that is also a net neutrality problem, although many people see it as just a bonus.

Stuff where an entire plan is free is fine. It's when different traffic is treated differently that net neutrality comes in.

Except where such variations in communications service are explicitly authorized by the consumer.

A counter example that I bet T-Mobile is waiting to deploy is parental control. As strange as it sounds, there are actually families that pay to have their wireless carrier restrict adult content while on-net.

EDIT: "As strange as it sounds" refers to the fact that most parental control solutions are network-based, when in fact a proper parental control solution should be client-based because as soon as your child goes to WiFi at MacDonalds/Starbucks they probably have access to all the adult content they want to see by bypassing the wireless carrier parental control network controls.

Speaking as a parent, the problem with client based controls is access to the client without an argument.

As a parent, and as a person working in the wireless industry, I share this frustration. The main issue is that a true client-based parental-control solution will:

a) eat up more data as the client's parental control component needs to continually update its URL database;

b) require more CPU and RAM (i.e. more expensive phone) if you want a better "content inspection" engine (since URLs are notoriously easy to bypass);

c) you are willfully acting as a MITM and creating a backdoor by forcing all content to be decrypted in some way for the solution to work effectively and only controlled by you (the parent), which may (or may not) compromise your stance on the issue of e2e encryption, privacy and security;

d) (your point above and following from c) having to personally safeguard and secure your child's device;

e) on Android, is it even possible to not root the device? Where's there's a will, there's a way: most kids with smartphones coupled with an incentive to bypass controls (Minecraft was a good example given above) could easily root their device, or eventually social engineer their parents into choosing future devices that are rootable.

Parental Controls are DRM. They're precisely the same problem statement and software solution: You want to turn general-purpose computing into devices that hide their capabilities from the user, selectively. This doesn't work on an informed and educated populace, and kids reach that level of education earlier than you think.

My parents stopped filtering my internet at about 8 - I'd been online since 4- and while I'm certainly more scarred and savvy about a variety of strange subcultures than I would otherwise be, I am glad of it. Even before then, the filters had not been 100%; I know by anecdote that I had seen some seriously deranged pornography before the filters completely dropped, and I really just wasn't interested.

> when in fact a proper parental control solution should be client-based because as soon as your child goes to WiFi at MacDonalds/Starbucks they probably have access to all the adult content they want to see by bypassing the wireless carrier parental control network controls.

And to anyone that doesn't think kids know how to change the wifi settings:

My son is 6. He trawls for open wifi like crazy if I don't start my hotspot. And other kids do to, at an alarming rate: We were flying to see his grandma before christmas and at the gate at London Gatwick, I turned on my hotspot. He was one the iPad that automatically connected. Only I had turned the password off at some point for some reason. Within a couple of minutes, half a dozen kids had joined his Minecraft world by finding my hotspot, and then starting Minecraft and realising there was an accessible local server ....

(alarming, because they'd be an oh-so-tempting target for all kinds of stuff...)

So I have T-Mobile (a prepaid account on a pay-as-you-go plan with no data), and there's already a parental control feature: they call it Web Guard. It's been there for a long time (since dumbphones) and is set to "Young Adult (17+)" by default. To turn it off I need to provide age verification: my full name, address, date of birth, and last four digits of my social security number. Although this information "will not be collected or stored for any use by T-Mobile USA" -- presumably it's only sent to Equifax or some other identity verification partner -- I'm still not comfortable giving them that information (I believe the only personal information I've ever provided is my name, email address, and ZIP code). I haven't made a fuss because I have no data plan, so turning it off won't help me, but I do still find it annoying.

Incidentally, when I went looking for the setting today (it's in your account profile under Phone Controls), I discovered I now have a Binge On setting, which is (of course) on by default. However, I haven't checked to see if streaming video works (even though I have no data plan).

I didn't know that but it makes sense from a liability perspective. Not sure if other prepaid offerings are similar.

Free isn't the problem, discrimination is.

T-Mobile's loophole argument is two-fold:

1) they are allowing customers to opt-out (maybe they will concede this could be improved, but it doesn't change their fundamental desire to circumvent net neutrality); 2) content discrimination has positive benefits for consumers (i.e. allows higher consumption of content)

T-Mobile may be willing to bet that the FCC and consumer groups will be hard-pressed to claim that sending HDTV vs. EDTV falls under a discriminatory context given the consumer benefits and (seeming) fulfillment of video service.

After that, they degrade services that are not paying them and zero-rate + allow higher bitrates for services that pay them.

"degrade services that are not paying them" and "allow higher bitrates for services that pay them" would even more blatantly violate FCC net neutrality in the US.

T-Mobile here is circumventing this by only zero-rating with an opt-out mechanism. If they tried to pull a stunt like Deutsche Telekom in Germany, they'd be fined in no time by the FCC in a clear and shut case. They are doing something far more subtle here in the US.

EDIT: For clarity, Deutsche Telekom is a majority shareholder of T-Mobile USA.

I hope you are right. FCC lauds BingeOn though and T-mobile might argue that it's a customers choice to degrade videos of non-zero rated partners.

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