AT&T exempts HBO Max from data caps but still limits your Netflix use | Hacker News Reader

AT&T exempts HBO Max from data caps but still limits your Netflix use

arstechnica.com

81 pointsAlexandrB20 comments

And so it begins...

As someone who uses AT&T mobile for my only internet, this is better than nothing.

But they promised they wouldn't do this! /s

At the bottom of the article it seems to indicate they have upheld their promise

> In July 2015, when AT&T bought DirecTV, the Wheeler FCC imposed a merger condition that barred AT&T from exempting its own online video services from home-Internet data caps. But the condition had a four-year time limit and expired in 2019, and the condition never applied to AT&T's mobile network.

This isn't the beginning, T-Mobile was the first to really promote their zero-rating: https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/19/10794288/netflix-t-mobile...

Let's not all pretend that this is something new simply because we don't like the side that is now doing it.

Tmobiles system was a lot more open but still fucked.

"The side"? What are the sides here?

It‘s different as T-Mobile doesn‘t OWN the content provider.

Unless I am missing something it seems like AT&T would be limiting both HBO and Netflix if net neutrality had passed?

Also, as far as I know net neutrality did not remove all data limits on unlimited plans right?

Could you be more specific in what you mean by “net neutrality”? It’s a principle that could be put into practice a number of different ways.

Net neutrality means all network packages are treated equally while they are delivered. Its not about how that is implemented.

> Net neutrality means all network packages are treated equally while they are delivered.

I was wondering what they meant by "...if net neutrality had passed", which seemed to indicate a particular legal implementation of the principle you described above.

Net neutrality is supposed to mean that all data are equal.

AT&T has a partnership with HBO. I get HBO for “free” as part of my phone bill. So by nature of that relationship they need to have a fat trunk to HBO’s content.

Not so much a partnership as AT&T bought Warner Media which includes HBO.

Att owns HBO

Not really. The US had numerous schemes like this under "net neutrality" (it wasn't).

Same for Europe, which was often touted as a net neutrality success story. This kind of scheme is extremely popular all across Europe.

This confused the heck out of me when zero-rating was being made out to be the greatest evil, and that the US should be more like the EU.

But, at the same time, half of the mobile phone ads I saw had zero-rating a specific service (facebook, usually) as the main selling point. e.g. "Top-up €20/month, get unlimited facebook access."

What are the chances??

if only there were some rule that require that network providers were required to treat traffic neutrally.

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