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The difference here is that unlike 1800 calls the amounts charged by phone companies for extra data over the plan is extortionate vs. what I imagine Facebook etc. Are charged and it's not easy for John Smith as a small biz owner to get in on this action whereas getting a toll free number is feasible. So it's pushing people into the big walled gardens.

I suppose so. The linked article says:

> “We welcome any video provider that wishes to sponsor its content in the same ‘data free’ way for AT&T Mobility customers and we’ll do so on equal terms at our lowest wholesale rates,” Bob Quinn, senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs at AT&T, said in the company’s Nov. 10 response to the FCC’s letter.

But it's hard to know how seriously to take that. At face value it suggests that they're willing to sell "data sponsorship" in much the same way phone companies sell 1-800 numbers. The reality may be different of course.

But 1-800 numbers are not cheaper, they just get charged to a different person

The "call" part of an 1-900 costs the same, but it's an added value charge

Yes, that was the point.

100 MB of DirectTV data costs AT&T the same as 100 MB of Netflix data; the difference is that it's being charged to a different person. Hence why I chose 1-800 numbers as an analogy. :)

> 100 MB of DirectTV data costs AT&T the same as 100 MB of Netflix data

Considering colocation with ISPs of service "black boxes", is this really true? Thinking of Netflix Open Connect and similar programs.

Ah now I see

1-800 was a bad example, but what about mobile-to-mobile calls on the same carrier, that some carriers have offered unlimited for free?

Interesting point. Perhaps the internet is complex enough that ISPs saying "We'll let you use <our preferred streaming service> for free" is materially different form phone companies saying "We'll let you make phone calls to <our preferred bank> for free"? Or is it? I don't think the telecoms tried or succeeded at capturing market share in this way back in the era of telephone.

The reason zero-rating is harmful is that it gives the ISP cover for monopoly abuse.

Suppose your ISP is owned by Facebook, so they zero-rate Facebook and charge high rates for all other data. Now those ISP customers are going to prefer Facebook over its competitors unless the competitors pay for zero-rating too. So Facebook gets to charge its competitors whatever they please for zero-rating, and they'll naturally want to charge a lot. They can even charge "themselves" the same amount because then it's just moving money from one pocket to another. So all they have to do is charge an amount that will put their competitors out of business and they'll have no more competitors.

> are we trying to protect consumers or content creators?

It's the same thing. Giving the ISP a monopoly on content harms consumers.

> If zero-rating is fine, would it be okay for AT&T to charge some data at higher rates, and then split the profit with the content creators? :) Eg, "AT&T now offers Netflix as a premium service; all AT&T customers now have a full access to the Netflix service! (Note, higher premium data usage rates apply when viewing premium Netflix content)" Would that be okay? Would it be harmful? To whom would it be harmful? :)

Let's consider why that might happen. If equal or less than the entire premium over the base data rate goes to Netflix then Netflix would just offer the service independent of AT&T, so it has to be that Netflix is receiving more than that. Let's consider why AT&T would do that. It's clearly not because AT&T has any interest in subsidizing Netflix.

But AT&T could set the base data rate higher than their own costs, so that any customer who uses any video service independent of AT&T is already paying AT&T a premium for that bandwidth. Then AT&T strikes deals with Netflix to charge an even slightly higher rate for Netflix bandwidth, and gives Netflix that increase plus a small percentage of the base rate. That forces Netflix to sign up for the deal with AT&T because it's the only way they can claw back even a part of the high base rate AT&T is charging to their customers.

And AT&T can decide who gets that deal, so AT&T gets to decide which video services are economically viable for AT&T ISP customers. Which harms competition and therefore consumers.

The reason this was traditionally less trouble with 1-800 numbers is that AT&T was never in competition with Zapatos to provide customer service to people who buy shoes, but they are in competition with Netflix et al to provide video service. And 1-800 numbers are available to everyone at the same published rates.

> So I dunno. I see some arguments in favor of having the providers of networks be strictly neutral when it comes to content.

What's the network, though?

Consider a cable company, such as Comcast. The physical cable that they own that runs from their nearest facility to your home can carry an analog waveform that can contain frequency components up to something like 2.something GHz.

The cable company divides that 2+ GHz into several hundred 6 MHz "channels". The channels are logically independent.

In the Before time, in the long long ago, those channels were used for analog television signals. One analog TV channel would fit in one cable channel.

Nowadays, the cable channels are used for digital data streams. The stream on a given cable channel often consists of multiple data streams multiplexed together. For example, a digital standard definition TV signal with good compression takes much less than 6 MHz bandwidth, so a cable company can put several such TV channels in one cable channel [1].

In addition to using these digital data streams over physical cable channels for TV channels, the cable company uses them for other services. Internet is one such service. Others could include telephone service and security alarm monitoring.

Let's take telephone service. There are at least three ways the cable provider could do this.

1. Run it directly on top of one of their digital data streams in one of their cable channels, using some reasonable protocol for telephone control and voice data.

2. Run an IP network over one or more of their digital data streams, completely separate from the IP network that is used for the home internet service that they provide for you. Use any common VOIP protocol on top of that.

3. Run a common VOIP protocol over the same IP network that is used to provide your home internet service.

Which of these would be subject to net neutrality? #1 and #2 do not involve the Internet, so it is hard to see how net neutrality would be applicable. #3 does use internet service (although if it is the cable company providing the telephone service, the packets probably never actually leave the cable company's network), so one might make a case for net neutrality there.

Both #1 and #2 do make it harder for a third-party internet VOIP provider to compete, because using a third-party VOIP provider will use some of your internet bandwidth, whereas #1 and #2 do not touch your internet bandwidth.

[1] This is why when some TV channels go out on a cable TV service, there is often no evident pattern to which are down and which are not. The mapping from user-visible TV channel numbers to actual channels on the cable can be arbitrary.